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A REPLY 

TO 

SIR WALTER SCOTT'S 

HISTORY 

OF 

NAPOLEON. 



# 



A REPLY 



SIR WALTER SCOTT'S 



HISTORY 



NAPOLEON, 



I 

LOUIS RONAPARTE, 

COUNT BE SAINT LEU, EX-KING OF HOLLAND, 
BROTHER OF THE EMPEROR. 



*i/ ^S 



Doe toel en zie niet om. 

Fay ce que doy, advienne que pourra. 



% Qtvmttlution from the ffivtmh. 



PHILADELPHIA: 



s 






CAREY, LEA& CARET, — CHESNUT STREET. 

SOLD, IN NEW TORE, BY G. & C. CARVILLE, IN BOSTON, BT MUNROE 

& FRANCIS. 

1 829. 



GHIGGS &, DICKINSON, PRINTERS. 






PREFACE. 



''■ 
The literary character of Sir Walter Scott is so 

highly and so justly prized by his countrymen, that 
the British public can but be anxious to hear the 
charges which the brother of Napoleon brings 
against his history of that extraordinary man. It 
is rather from the certainty of this very natural cu- 
riosity than from any conviction of the merits of the 
Reply, that the translator has been induced to begin 
or to continue his labour. That which concerns Sir 
Walter the most, is the general imputation of ca- 
lumnious intention which this sensitive commenta- 
tor brings against him. There can, however, be as 
little doubt that the impartial reader of the life of 
Napoleon Bonaparte will acquit his biographer, as 
that he will make due allowance for the excited 
feelings of so near a relative writing under the ac- 
cumulation of painful circumstances which have oc- 



\ J PREFACE. 

curred to render more acute his sense of any injus- 
tice, real or suppositious, done to the memory of a 
brother. Nor will his special accusations produce 
much more effect, although they can but be taken 
to demonstrate an amiable regard to the name and 
fame of one to whose real character and intentions 
posterity alone can do even that imperfect justice 
which it belongs to history to afford. 

The best defence of Sir Walter Scott's book, 
should it be thought to require any, appears to lie 
in the fact — that it was the author's intention to 
produce merely a popular history. Thus, they who 
anticipated a dramatic and romantic tale, and they 
who expected a profound and philosophical Work, 
are alike disappointed. But the public — namely, 
that vast proportion of the country which was ea- 
ger to be made acquainted with the great and pro- 
minent features of the transactions of France from 
the rise to the conclusion of the revolution — par- 
ticularly with the actions of Bonaparte — and to 
obtain as much knowledge of his personal conduct 
and bearing as must necessarily be gathered from 
such a life, has been., there is every reason to be- 
lieve, at once amused and satisfied. The internal 
evidence is amply sufficient to convince the inquirer 
that the entire scope of Sir Walter Scott's purpose 
must have been general truth rather than that ela- 



PREFACE. Vll 

borate investigation which settles the curious and 
minute particulars of history. The translator thinks 
it due to himself to prefix these opinions, to obviate 
any the most remote supposition that he makes him- 
self a party to the vituperation with which the au- 
thor of the original has loaded Sir Walter — at the 
same time perhaps it should seem proper to avow, 
that he has not the honour of the slightest per- 
sonal acquaintance or communication with that gen- 
tleman. 

In order to make the authenticity of the Reply 
more certain and authoritative, the Conte de St. 
Leu has affixed a list of his works and his signa- 
ture to the book. They are as follow : — 



Marie ou les Hollandaises, Roman en 3 petits vols. 12mo. 

Documens historiques sur la Hollande, 3 vols. 8vo. 

Memoire sur la versification, contenant un receuil d'odes pub- 
liees precedemment en brochure et des essais de vers sans 
rime. 

Essai sur la versification, 2 vols, in 8vo. contenant Popera 
de Ruth, la trajedie Lucrecej ces deux pieces ecrites en vers 
sans rime, et la comedie de l'Avere de Moliere, reduite en vers 
de la meme espece. 

Nouveau recueil de poesies publiees a Florence l'annee der- 
niere, et contenant la suite de Lutrin, poeme en 5 chants, &c. 

Cette reponse a Sir Walter Scott. 



A REPLY 



SIR WALTER SCOTT'S 

HISTORY OF 

JfAPOL-EOJV, 

LOUIS BONAPARTE, 

COUNT DE SAINT LEU, EX-KING OF HOLLAND, 
BROTHER OF THE EMPEROR. 



History is in itself so uncertain and so easily 
falsified and disfigured, that 1 do not like historical 
romances; I, however, wish to do justice to the au- 
thor of so many brilliant pictures of manners and 
characters. When the work which forms the ob- 
ject of these observations was announced, I ima- 
gined that so distinguished a writer, tired of the 
vain renown of the novelist, wished to raise himself 
to that of the legitimate historian; but to my great 
astonishment, I found on reading this book, that 
after having turned into romance some parts of the 
history of his own country, he has now converted 
into history the romances and libels, fabricated du- 
ring the last thirty years, against France^and against 
Napoleon. 

2 



10 

Nevertheless we distinguish in this work two dif- 
ferent, and, as it were, two opposite styles ; one of 
which, conforming to truth, is almost always the 
eulogium of Napoleon; and the other, a false or 
exaggerated criticism, is too often ironical, calum- 
nious, and cruel. One would say that the first only 
is the conscientious work of the author. 

The best reply would be to establish with preci- 
sion facts so much disfigured by enmity; but this is 
not now my object; I wish but to protest against 
the exaggeration, the injustice, the falsehood, the 
calumny, and I will even say the excessive calumny, 
spread throughout the work of Sir Walter Scott; 
and I have the greater right to do this, because con- 
cerning a great number of facts I can add my oc- 
cular testimony, since I lived with my brother from 
eleven years of age, and almost always accompa- 
nied him until that of twenty-seven, when I went to 
Holland. 

The evident object of the author is not only to 
lower the glory of Napoleon, but also to slander 
the whole nation, and principally his immortal and 
ever triumphant armies, suppressed rather than van- 
quished in 1814 by treason. 

Genius and glory have not been, are not, and ne- 
ver will be, the property of a single nation, of a sin- 
gle army, of a single chief; every country possesses 
and has possessed its share; but it does not raise 
the great men of one country above those of any 



11 

other to heap malice and calumny upon either. 
Far from so doing, the great care which is taken 
to blacken and disfigure them, and to exaggerate 
their defects, their errors, and their faults, from 
which they cannot be exempt -since they are but 
men, proves on the contrary how much their cele- 
brity wounds common-place rivalship and enmity; 
but great actions have this advantage over fine wri- 
ting, even over the most adroit calumnies, that the 
latter disappear under the scythe of time, whilst 
the former are not only untouched by it, but their 
very celebrity augments and is consolidated as it 
grows older. 



12 



VOLUME III. 



I could not conceal from my self the bad intentions 
of the author, on perceiving that in a work, the ob- 
ject of which is to make known the life of Napo- 
leon, he does not begin to speak of him until the 
third volume. It is evident that he has wished to 
attach the name of Napoleon to the excesses and 
horrors of the revolution, to which he was not only 
a stranger, but to which he put an end. He has 
also wished to augment and exaggerate those ex- 
cesses and horrors from a sentiment of enmity 
against France, as unjust as it is ungenerous. 

Another visible object is, that of desiring to make 
Napoleon pass as a foreigner in France. 

In fact, if such were not the intentions of the au- 
thor, why this obstinacy in writing the family name 
of Napoleon, Buonaparte, instead of Bonaparte, con- 
secrated as it is by long habit ? 

Certainly the letter O is not more or less noble 
or French than the letter U, but it is done to im- 
press a, foreign character upon Napoleon, and divide 
his glory from that of France. 



13 

The Italian nation is sufficiently glorious for one 
to be proud of belonging to it, especially of deriv- 
ing one's origin from this beautiful country; but 
when one has been born under the laws of France, 
grown up on its soil, with no other knowledge of 
foreign countries, even of beautiful Italy, than that 
gained with the victorious legions of France, it is 
rather too ridiculous to receive from an English au- 
thor the certificate of a foreigner. 

One observation could not escape me on this sub- 
ject ; which is, that allowing Napoleon to have the 
right to spell his name as he pleased, the author 
writes it as it is not the custom of our family. 

A similar wicked intention will be found in the 
article on the siege of Toulon, where, to diminish 
the glory of this first exploit of Napoleon, the au- 
thor makes him participate in the horrors that fol- 
lowed the capture — a circumstance which during 
30 years no libeller had ever imagined. This is 
the more remarkable, as he himself says, at the 
conclusion of this calumny, that it is without foun- 
dation. Why then does he consign it a place in 
his book ? Can it be with any other intention than 
to blacken the renown of him, of whom he calls 
himself the historian ? Our author doubtless is not 
responsible for the few merits of his book— no one 
can give more than he has ; it shows however but 
little respect to the public, it is to be wanting in self- 
respect not to give himself the trouble of verifying 
the assertions he advances. But these sort of works 



14 

are commercial speculations upon the greedy cu- 
riosity of readers, which are productive in propor- 
tion to the malice and calumny they contain, and 
doubtless the life of Napoleon, by Sir Walter Scott, 
is of this number — else what can we conceive ! ! 

We find at page 6, vol. III. that Lucien was 
scarcely inferior to his brother in talent and ambi- 
tion. As to ambition, the author himself contra- 
dicts this observation, when he declares that Lucien 
refused the honours Napoleon offered him, on con- 
dition that his second marriage should not be ac- 
knowledged. And as to talents, 1 feel assured that 
Lucien himself, notwithstanding the eloquence and 
ability which distinguish him, never dreamed of en- 
tering into rivalry with his brother. But after hav- 
ing endeavoured to give the title of foreigner to the 
man whom the French chose for their Emperor, af- 
ter having essayed to lower his great actions, they 
would even take from him his superiority in his 
own family. I think myself therefore obliged here 
to declare — I, brother of the Emperor Napoleon — 
that it was in his family he began to exercise the 
greatest superiority, not when glory and power had 
elevated him, but even from his youth. 

The author affects to call the French soldiers of 
the first years of the revolution Sans-culottes and 
Carmagnoles, and he thus shows himself both un- 
just and but little informed of the state of affairs. 
If he had better studied the composition of the ar- 
mies at this period he would have known that the 



15 

French troops formed of the youth of the nation, 
put in requisition, were composed of the purest 
blood of the nation, and that it was not rare to find 
in their ranks sons and brothers of the victims of 
revolutionary fury. 

Vol. III. page 14. — " Though of Italian origin, Buonaparte 
had not a decided taste for the fine arts," says Sir Walter Scott. 

I venture to believe that even in England he will 
find few persons of his opinion. Is it not playing 
with the credulity of his readers to advance such 
an assertion? He who enriches his country by the 
most brilliant collection of the chef d'oeuvres of an- 
tiquity ; he who during the whole of his reign, en- 
couraged the production of great works and re- 
compensed artists with an unheard of magnificence ; 
he who established decennial prizes, and gave a 
wider range to national production ; he who raised 
in Paris monuments which Sir Walter Scott could 
not avoid seeing in his short journey to that capital; 
he who caused to be constructed the prodigious 
road which traverses the Alps, he had no taste for 
the fine arts ! ! ! 

Such a discussion may be addressed to posterity ; 
but if it reaches it, it will only be to the shame of 
the author. 

Vol. III. page 21. — " Buonaparte was in Corsica, upon leave 
of absence from his regiment, when these events were taking 
placej and although he himself and Paoli had hitherto been on 
friendly terms, and some family relations existed between 
them," &c. 



16 

There did not exist the least relationship between 
our family and that of Paoli. My father, Charles 
Bonaparte, was united by friendship to Paoli, whom 
he aided in the defence of the island. Napoleon 
could not have known Paoli, since he was born af- 
ter the departure of the latter for England. It was 
not the cause of the Convention which Napoleon 
embraced, but the cause of France, that of his 
country against the enemy. The Corsican factions 
of which Walter Scott speaks were nothing more 
than insurrections raised by the English and by Pao- 
li, who having received from the Government the 
command of this military division of France, made 
use of his authority to give up the country to Eng- 
land. 

After the bad success of the expedition of Sar- 
dinia, commanded by admiral Fruguet and old ge- 
neral Casabianca, in which Napoleon had a sepa- 
rate command, Paoli endeavoured in vain to shake 
the fidelity of the latter, who hastened to join the 
commissaries of the government, Lacombe Saint 
Michel and Saliceti ; it was with them that he en- 
deavoured to drive the insurgents from Ajaccio; not 
being able to succeed, he re-entered his regiment, 
that of Grenoble, which then was with the army of 
Italy, at head quarters at Nice. 

It is equally false that Masseria and not Masse- 
rio, one of the companions of Paoli, was a rela- 
tion of Napoleon ; he was quite unknown to us. 



1? 

Vol. III. page, 23. — "Napoleon and his brother Lucien, who 
had distinguished themselves as partisans of the French, were 
subjected to a decree of banishment from their native island; 
and Madame Buonaparte, with her three daughters, and Jerome, 
who was as yet but a child, set sail under their protection, 
and settled for a time, first at Nice, and afterwards at Mar- 
seilles, &c. 

These details are not exact ; those I have given 
in Documens historiques sur la Hollande are perfectly 
correct, and ought to be credited, because although 
a child, I was with my mother at this period, whom 
I followed into Provence and lived with her until the 
taking of Toulon, when I embraced the military pro- 
fession. 

It was not Lucien who accompanied Napoleon, 
but Joseph : Lucien was then at Marseilles with the 
ambassador Semonville, whom he was to accompa- 
ny to Constantinople. Jerome, scarcely seven years 
old, and Caroline, aged eight, resided at Ajaccio, 
and were not brought to us until some time after, 
whilst I was with my mother and my uncle arch- 
deacon Fesch, since Cardinal. 

I relate these little inaccuracies merely to esta- 
blish facts as they really occurred. 

Vol. III. page 25. — " Napoleon never again revisited Cor- 
sica,'' &c. 

This is false, as he disembarked at Ajaccio on 
his return from Egypt, and remained there several 
days before his arrival at Frejus. However puerile 
these observations may seem, they nevertheless 



18 

prove the little respect the author has paid to truth 
in compiling his work. 

It is said (page 30) that Napoleon was protected 
by his countryman, the deputy of the Convention 
Saliceti, who had voted the death of the king; in- 
stead of which it was this deputy who, with his col- 
leagues, Albite and Ricord, caused Napoleon to be 
arrested at head quarters at Nice, and made him 
submit to an arrest of several days, during which 
time they inspected all his papers, which they did 
not restore until after they had ransacked them. 

The author is so careless in informing himself of 
the truth, that he says, after the taking of Toulon, 
Napoleon was confirmed in his provisional rank of 
a chief of battalion, and employed by this title in the 
army of Italy, whilst in fact he was chief of batta- 
lion, or lieutenant-colonel in the fourth regiment of 
artillery, that of Grenoble, on arriving at the siege of 
Toulon, and after the capture he was promoted to 
the rank of general of brigade of artillery, com- 
mandant in chief of that of the army of Italy. It 
was in this capacity that he inspected and fortified 
the coasts, and not in consequence of a commission 
received from the Convention. 



Vol. III. page 49. — " In May, 1795, he came to Paris to so- 
licit employment in his profession. He found himself unfriend- 
ed and indigent in the city of which he was at no distant period 
to be the ruler. Some individuals, however, assisted him, and 
among others the celebrated performer Talma, who had known 
him while at the militarv school," &c. 






id 

All this passage is false. Napoleon did not go to 
Paris to solicit employment, but to join the army of 
the West, into which he had been removed as com- 
mandant of artillery, a destination which displeased 
him greatly, and which he hoped to change : birtjt 
is true he found the deputy Aubry, secretary of mi- 
litary affairs, not very favourably disposed towards 
him, on account of his extreme youth, and of the se- 
verity of the artillery regulations concerning senio- 
rity. 

His demands were not only refused, but he was 
even deprived of the command of the artillery in the 
army of the West, and made to pass into the line as 
general of brigade. This appeared to Napoleon as 
an insult — he refused, and lived at Paris without em- 
ployment, but he enjoyed his pay of an unemployed 
general officer, and he had with him three officers, 
Junot, Marmont, and myself. It is true that Mar- 
mont quitted him soon after to join his regiment at 
the army of the Rhine, but Junot still resided with 
him : and as for myself, I was sent on account of my 
extreme youth to the school of artillery at Chalons, 
and it was he who provided for all the attendant ex 
penses. 



Napoleon did not know Talma until this'period, as 
when he was at the military schools it was impossi- 
ble for a pupil to associate with actors ; it belonged 
to the manners of the time in 1795 not only to ad- 
mit actors into society, but even to give them enter- 
tainments in order as it were to make amends for 




^0 

their former abasement. It was in the society of" 
that period that Napoleon knew Talma ; but it is 
impossible that the pecuniary assistance spoken of 
should then have been given, unless indeed it were 
in a reversed sense. 

Vol. HI. page 50. — " Buonaparte had something of his native 
country in his disposition — he forgot neither benefits nor inju- 
ries," &c. 

This is false, no one was less vindictive than Na- 
poleon; he received, caressed, advanced his ene- 
mies, and the treasons to which he fell a victim were 
probably owing to his too great confidence. 

The pleasantries that next follow upon the design 
attributed to Napoleon of going into Turkey are as 
false as they are ridiculous and in bad taste. If he 
had not always nourished in his breast an ardent 
patriotism for France, what finer occasion could he 
have found than that offered to him by General 
Paoli after the treason of the latter ? 

Vol. III. page 72. — " The trivial proposal attri- 
buted by Walter Scott to Barras, when Napoleon 
was nominated to the command on the 13th vende- 
miare, is an insignificant falsehood, and I can prove 
it to be such. It is said that Barras, addressing 
himself to Carnot and to Tallien, said, ' / have the 
man you want ; he is a little Corsican officer, who will 
not stand upon ceremony.'' " 

Now, for several months, Napoleon* not being ac~ 



21 

tively employed, laboured in the military committee, 
and was well acquainted with Carnot and Tallies 
whom he saw daily; how then could Barras make 
them the proposal attributed to him ? 

If fresh proofs of the calumnious and defamato- 
ry spirit which has dictated the pretended history 
of Walter Scott were wanting, they will be found 
in the passage which concludes the second chapter 
of the third volume. It is there said that the dow- 
ry of the first wife of Napoleon was the command 
of the army of Italy, an absurdity gathered from se- 
veral libels of the time. It is also said that he has- 
tened to his family, who were at Marseilles, that he 
might show himself a favourite of fortune in a town 
which he had quitted a short time before, almost in 
the condition of an indigent adventurer. Now, this 
indigent adventurer, on quitting Marseilles, was co- 
vered with glory by the capture of Toulon, and 
more recently by the campaign, during which Saor- 
gio had been taken and the battle of Cairo won : he 
showed himself at Marseilles as commander in chief 
of the artillery of Italy. It is true, he relinquished 
his situation, but it was to occupy another equiva- 
lent to it in the army of the West ; and the report, 
which named this change, had at the article Napo- 
leon the following observation : — " A young officer 
of the greatest distinction, to whom is due the 
taking of Toulon." 

It cannot be impossible to procure a copy of the 



22 

military reports of this period, as so many were 
printed they cannot have entirely disappeared. 

At page 118, vol. III. the author ridicules the pro- 
clamations of Napoleon, whilst he at the same time 
stigmatizes the character of the French soldiers. 
We must pity, without feeling astonishment at the 
author of so many romances, for his blindness and 
want of taste ; but whether he addresses himself to 
French or English readers, I doubt if he can con- 
vince them that the eloquence and the warriors who 
achieved so much, were not in the road to greatness 
and splendour. 

Vol. HI. page 141. — "The next of these sufferers was the 
Duke of Modena," &c 

Sir Walter Scott considers as victims the Princes 
of Italy, with whom the French army were en- 
gaged ; but so far from this expression being just, 
Napoleon rendered them a great service by signing 
treaties with them, since by so doing he secured 
their political existence, at a time when it was pow- 
erfully threatened by the system and the instruc- 
tions of the government, and also by the excitement 
which prevailed throughout the different countries 
of Italy. 

The contributions in money and works of art to 
which these princes were submitted were not sacri- 
fices which ought to have weighed against the loss 
of their political existence. 



23 

There was not one of them who did not receive 
the treaty concerning himself as a benefit and with 
real joy. 

The author says that the motive which induced 
Napoleon to receive a portion of the contributions 
in works of art, ivas more easily discovered than justi- 
fied, (vol. III. page 145,) but he will allow me in my 
turn to think that the one is as easy as the other. 

In fact works of art are trophies of victory: the 
ancients dragged their captives, and even crowned 
captives, behind their chariots; the barbarians took 
or destroyed all conquered countries. The French 
under Napoleon were more generous in preferring 
works of art. 

The author makes 'Napoleon say on this occa- 
sion, when the officers entreated him to relinquish 
the St. Jerome of Correggio, for the sum of two 
millions of francs. " The two millions of f ratios would 
soon be spent, but the Correggio would remain an orna- 
ment of the city of Paris for ages, and inspire the pro- 
duction of future master-pieces.''' 



This is nevertheless he whom the author before 
accused of having no taste for the fine arts ! ! ! 

Is it then so difficult for the author, according to 
this answer, to justify the motive which made Na- 
poleon prefer works of art ? It was a motive too 
great and too praise-worthy to need justification : 



24 

if the author did not press it, it was not only be- 
cause he did not wish to do so, but because he, on 
the contrary, endeavoured to alter its signification ; 
in the same manner he gives to Napoleon the qua- 
lification of the devoted agent of the Directory, 
which the whole work of Walter Scott disproves, 
thus manifesting the blindness and the ill will of 
hatred. 

Vol. III. page 254. — " The conqueror of the best generals 
and most disciplined troops in Europe, within a few months af- 
tor he had been a mere soldier of fortune, seeking rather for 
subsistence than expecting honourable distinction," &c. 

However unwilling I may feel to renew the sub- 
ject of these mean and false invectives, I must ne- 
vertheless express the opinions they give rise to, 
even while I repress the disgust and contempt they 
inspire. 

What does Walter Scott understand by a soldier 
of fortune ? Before the revolution those were so 
called in France, who, commencing as common sol- 
diers, rose to rank ; and we find even according to 
the statement of the author, that the military career 
of Napoleon did not so commence, but that he was 
entitled by his birth and by his superior acquire- 
ments, to take rank amongst the officers of the ce- 
lebrated corps of artillery. One may imagine that 
in England those are called soldiers of fortune who 
enter the service of the East India Company to con- 
quer without difficulty an ignorant people, and to 
enrich themselves as easily with their spoils or their 



' 25 

traffic ; but the expression, soldier of fortune, can- 
not be applied to Napoleon, unless it merely signi- 
fies that he owed his advancement solely to his mi- 
litary success ; and certainly in this case the taunt 
the author addresses to him fails in its effect. 

With regard to the situation in which Napoleon 
found himself some months before, the author is not 
ignorant that he was general in chief of the army 
of the interior of Paris, and that shortly before he 
commanded the warriors to whom the author gives 
the nick-names of Carmagnoles and Sans-culottes, 
but who, notwithstanding with small numbers and 
but few cannon, drove the combined fleet of Eng- 
land and Spain from the roads of Toulon, after 
having destroyed their army by land, carried at the 
point of the sword the forts which treason had de- 
livered up to the English army, and made prisoner 
General O'Hara, its commander in chief. It is in 
vain for the author to seek to apply this passage to 
the short interval which Napoleon passed without 
employment at Paris. I have already said that his 
distress at this period is entirely false ; although he 
was unemployed, he nevertheless retained his rank 
and pay as a general officer. 

He was called to and consulted in the committee 

of war, and it was to the high opinion the members 

of this committee formed of his genius and great 

character so well tried at the siege of Toulon, that 

he owed the command on the 1 3th vendemaire, and 

afterwards that of the army of Italy. 

4 






20 

Vol. III. page 264. — The Saint Bonaventure Bo- 
naparte here mentioned is the canonized Bonaven- 
ture Bonaparte whose body I myself saw, in my 
journey to Bologna on the 3d September, 1817, in 
the chapel of St. Jerome, belonging to the Ghisili- 
eri family, in the church of Santa Maria de la 
Vita. 

APPENDIX TO THE 3d VOLUME. 

Page 3. — Count Pozzo di Borgo was a person of 
estimation in the town of Ajaccio, who daily visited 
the family of Bonaparte, but he was no relation to 
them. At the period of Paoli's treason Pozzi di 
Borgo emigrated first into England, and afterwards 
into Russia. 

The pretended banishment of the family of Bona- 
parte from Corsica is a fable. Corsica had during 
twenty-five years appertained to France. Paoli him- 
self had received from the government the military 
command of Corsica: who then had the right to 
banish the Bonaparte family ? They left the town 
of Ajaccio and Corsica solely on account of the 
surrender of the island to the enemy, and first re- 
tired to La Valette near Toulon, and afterwards to 
Marseilles. 

Vol III. page 8. — " He invited Monsieur Joly to visit him 
at Auxonne, with a view to print and publish this work. He 
came, and found the future emperor in a naked barrack room, 
the sole furniture of which consisted of a wretched bed without 
curtains, a table placed in the embrazure of a window, loaded 



27 

with books and papers, and two chairs. His brother Louis, 
Avhom he was teaching mathematics, lay on a wretched mat- 
tress in an adjoining closet. Monsieur Joly and the author 
agreed on the price of the impression of the book, but Napo- 
leon was at the time in uncertainty whether he was to remain 
at Auxonne or not. Shortly after, he was ordered to Toulon, 
where his extraordinary career first commenced. The work on 
Corsica was never printed, nor has a trace of it been disco- 
vered. Monsieur Joly, naturally desirous of preserving every 
recollection of this interview with the future conqueror of na- 
tions in the character and condition of a Grub-street author, 
mentions that the clerical dress and ornaments of the chaplain 
of the regiment, whose office had been just suppressed, were 
deposited with Napoleon by the other officers. He showed 
them to his visiter, and spoke of the ceremonies of religion 
without indecency, yet also without respect. ' If you have not 
heard mass to-day, I can say it to you,' was his expression to 
Monsieur Joly." 

This passage contains almost as many falsehoods 
as lines. I remember very well that on my account 
my brother had more convenient and more roomy 
quarters allotted to him than to the other officers 
of the same rank. The furniture could not be bet- 
ter or worse than that of the other officers, since 
they were all in barracks, aDd consequently lodged 
and furnished by the state. I recollect that I had a 
very good room and a very good bed. My brother 
directed my studies, but I had the necessary mas- 
ters, even in literature. 

The phrase, " Napoleon was at the time in uncer- 
tainty whether he was to remain at Auxonne or not" 
appears to indicate that he was undecided whether 
he should follow the example of many of his com- 



rades who emigrated, fndecision was not a part 
of his character, and he never hesitated upon the 
conduct he should adopt. He was not, as it is said, 
sent shortly after to Toulon; shortly after he was 
passed by promotion into the regiment of Grenoble, 
in garrison at Valence, and I followed him there. 
From thence he went to Corsica on leave of absence 
for six months, to prepare himself for his campaign, 
and I followed him there also ; but during his leave 
of absence, he was elected lieutenant-colonel in a 
newly-raised regiment of infantry, without losing his 
rank in the artillery of the line, in consequence of 
the military regulations of the period, made to in- 
duce officers of the line to enter among the fresh 
troops. I remained with my family. On the return 
of the expedition from Sardinia, and after the trea- 
son of Paoli, Napoleon rejoined his regiment (the 
lth artillery) at Nice, and my family retired first to 
La Valette, near Toulon, and thence to Marseilles, 
as has been already said. 

It was after this that Napoleon was chosen to in- 
spect the different arsenals, in order to form a be- 
sieging equipment, indispensable to the army; and 
it was on his return from this mission only, and on 
his passage to Marseilles, that he was put in requi- 
sition to replace in the army of Toulon General Do- 
martin, commandant of the artillery of the siege, 
who had just been severely wounded. 

I am ignorant of what is related of Napoleon 
regarding the ornaments of the church, but I can 



29 

affirm that at this time I received my first com- 
munion in consequence of his care and exhorta- 
tions. 

It was he who gave me the necessary instructions 
and preparations, through the medium of a worthy 
ecclesiastic, the brother of Madame de Pillon, an 
old lady of consideration, whose house was fre- 
quented every evening by the society of Auxonne. 

I was a child at this period; but as I perfectly re- 
collect all that I relate, I should also recollect hav- 
ing seen the ornaments here named, and the pro- 
posals attributed to my brother, if the statement 
was true, since I can very well recollect that I went 
to mass on Sundays and festivals, with the whole 
regiment assembled in a body. 



VOLUME IV. 



Page 50. At the beginning of this volume the au- 
thor dilates with great complacency on the chime- 
rical projects he attributes to Napoleon. Let me 
be allowed to observe that Walter Scott may possi- 
bly have partaken in the opinion of a great num- 
ber of persons respecting Napoleon's sentimunts 
concerning the expedition to Egypt, but I cannot do 
the same. 

I was aide-de-camp to my brother from the com- 



30 

mencement of the campaigns in Italy, and I accom- 
panied him in this capacity to Egypt ; and although 
I remained in that country but a short time, yet as I 
received the double mission of carrying to the Di- 
rectory the first colours taken in Egypt, of giving 
an account of the situation of the army and de- 
manding the necessary reinforcements, I had the 
means of forming an opinion upon this expedition 
as correct as that of others. 

The conquest of Malta and the colonization of 
Egypt had the greatest influence upon the prospe- 
rity of our commerce in the Levant and in India, as 
well as upon our navy ; it would have been attack- 
ing England in India, slowly it is true, but with the 
greatest efficacy, notwithstanding the immense 
strength of the English navy, and that without run- 
ning the chances of an expedition by land to India, 
which as it appears to me was impossible. This pro- 
ject was in itself sufficiently great and sufficiently 
glorious without its being necessary to imagine the 
extravagant project of dethroning the Grand Sig- 
nor, &c. 

The issue of the attack upon Malta and the de- 
scent in Egypt, in spite of the English fleets and 
the skill of Nelson, have demonstrated the justice 
of these calculations, as even the loss of the battle 
of Aboukir has proved to all who like myself wit- 
nessed it, that France may have an efficient navy 
whenever it is seriously desired, or rather when- 
ever it is undertaken to complete its organization 
and administration. 



31 

All that the author says against the expedition to 
India by land is not only exaggerated, but is below 
the truth. It is not by open force that India may 
be attacked by crossing Egypt and Arabia, but by 
establishing and consolidating a French force in 
Egypt, by opening the ancient communication by 
Suez, by multiplying the relations between Egypt 
and India, and in short by so augmenting the French 
navy in the Mediterranean that this sea should be- 
come almost inaccessible to the English squad- 
rons. 

Vol. 4, page 60.— The author says that the pro- 
clamation of Napoleon to the army, on their de- 
parture from Toulon was a mixture of bombast and 
bad taste; and as this observation proceeds from 
the author of romances so frequently filled with ta- 
vern scenes, it appears to me to be quite natural. 

Vol. IV. page 81. — I know not if it be true that 
the Archbishop of Malines, ambassador to War- 
saw, made use of the expression of Jupiter Scapin 
towards Napoleon ; it appears to me incontestable 
that the name of Scapin would have been much 
more justly applied to the writer, a bishop and an 
ambassador, who could be capable of indulging in 
such an impertinence towards the sovereign he re- 
presented. 

The mean digression of the author upon the pro- 
ject he attributes to Napoleon of turning Mussul- 
man is worthy of the author of so many fictions. 



32 

Vol IV. page 91. — " But the same Deity, who rendered 
that gulph fatal to Pharaoh, had reserved for one, who equally 
defied and disowned his power, the rocks of an island in the 
midst of the Atlantic. '' 

What cruel irony ! I will even dare to call it fe- 
rocious, towards an enemy who was but too con- 
fiding and who has so long been dead! ! ! 

I feel assured that no Englishman of feeling and 
reflection can approve the cruel raillery, and I may 
add, the unworthy triumph of a soldier of the pen, 
upon the melancholy and the miserably prolonged 
end of an enemy, whose greatest fault was a blind 
confidence in the generosity of a government, which 
was his chief enemy. 

Vol. IV. page 84. — It is false that in Egypt he 
showed himself almost persuaded of the truth of the 
mission of Mahomet. He proclaimed that the Mus- 
sulman religion was that of the country, and ought 
to be respected and even protected. He conducted 
himself in Egypt with a prudence and a policy, dic- 
tated as much by equity as by solicitude for the pre- 
servation of the army. Doubtless, deceit and false- 
hood should be banished from the language of real 
policy, since as government ought to be> as much as 
is in the power of man, the image of God upon 
earth, its language can and ought to be that of 
truth and justice. This however does not preclude 
the right of proclaiming and respecting the religious 
worship and opinions of a conquered nation, and it 
was in this sense that the proclamations addressed 



33 

by Napoleon to the Mussulmen should be regarded; 
I consider them as a manifestation of toleration on 
the part of the French army towards the conquered 
people of the East. They would not have been un- 
derstood by these people if they had not spoken 
their language ; and to give an idea of their pertina- 
city on this head I can affirm, that whilst I was in 
Holland, I remarked upon and rejected at first the 
title of Emperor given to the King of Holland by the 
sublime Porte ; and upon expressing my astonish- 
ment, I was assured that the Sublime Porte gave 
this title to the sovereigns of other countries, and 
that that of king would not be understood. I know 
not whether this custom still exists in Constantino- 
ple, but I can affirm that it was in use in 1807. 

Vol. IV. page 197. — " Buonaparte, who had first shaken the 
papal authority, and in doing so, as he boasted in his Egyptian 
proclamations, had destroyed the emblem of Christian wor- 
ship." 

The author is deceived or feigns to be deceived. 
It was not Napoleon who had first shaken the papal 
authority ; on the contrary, he prevented its falling 
at the peace of Tolentino, probably contrary to the 
instructions of his government. He was politic, 
prudent, and adroit towards the Mussulmen of 
Egypt; he was conscientious as well as politic to- 
wards the ministers of his own religion, as his death 
has proved. 

There are no observations to be made upon the 
numerous similes of the author, too nearly resem- 

5 



34 

bling those of the taverns of his romances, or ra- 
ther too many might be made ; one can but despise 
and pity their author, who, imagining he is writing 
an offensive history of France and Napoleon, has 
only compiled all the follies and calumnies, scatter- 
ed throughout the libels of the period, to which he 
has found the means of adding more. 

This voluminous satire has one undeniable ad- 
vantage, that of presenting a collection of all the 
calumnies and invectives uttered for thirty years 
against Napoleon. 

Historians are ordinarily led to consider their he- 
roes with too much benevolence; it is not a reproach 
which can be brought against Walter Scott. At 
every step may be traced proofs of the plan of ca- 
lumny which he laid down for himself. 

He says on the occasion of the battle of Novi, 
and on the death of Joubert, " it has been rumoured, 
certainly without the least probability, that he did not fall 
by the fire of the Austrians, but by tfiat of assassins hired 
by the family of JYapoleon, to take out of the way a poic- 
erful competitor of their brother." 

He then adds that it is without the slightest pro- 
bability — that it would have been a very gratuitous 
crime, since they could neither reckon with certain- 
ty on the arrival of Bonaparte, nor upon his being 
adopted by Sieyes. Why then may we ask him, do 
you record such an atrocity ? It can only be be- 



35 

cause you are aware that some portion of a calum- 
ny always continues to be believed. 

We find with surprise the Convention named as 
a body existing in 1802. This proves with what 
inexactitude and with what contempt for his readers 
the author has compiled his work. 

It is with equal veracity he affirms in the same 
volume that Napoleon would not begin the revolu- 
tion of the 18th brumaire on the 17th, because that 
day was a Friday, and that he was superstitious ! ! ! 
Probably then in all his wars, he always rested on 
a Friday ! ! ! 

I do not know whether what is said of the con- 
duct of Bernadotte on the 1 8th brumaire is true ; I 
do know that I- was at the breakfast given by 
Bernadotte at this time, and that Napoleon could 
not take part in it. It is said that the former re- 
fused his co-operation on account of his republican 
principles; but neither he nor Moreau, nor any one 
whatever, could have prevented Napoleon from at- 
taining the government; he was elevated to it by 
public opinion, the army, and the whole nation, as 
light bodies are raised by the waves. The author 
of the historical romances must pardon me this 
bombast. 



36 



VOLUME V. 

That which Walter Scott advances in the begin- 
ning of the fifth volume, concerning the blameable 
policy of Napoleon with respect to the Swiss, when 
he gave them his act of mediation, is not only false 
but calumnious, and I will prove it to be so. I was 
in Switzerland in 1814, after the invasion of the al- 
lies, and certainly this was the period of the great- 
est enmity and malignity towards Napoleon; it was 
the epoch of the calumniators and libellers ; there 
existed those who carried their effrontery so far as 
to declare that the name of Napoleon was not his 
own, and that he was called Nicholas. Neverthe- 
less even at this period, some of the deputies of the 
diet, and the landammans of the different cantons, 
and the principal Swiss, who frequented the baths 
of Baden, near Zurich, where I then was, did not 
refrain from openly declaring that they could not 
complain of the Emperor Napoleon, that he had put 
an end to their difficulties, secured their existence, 
and that they could feel nothing but gratitude to- 
wards him. 

This assertion does not need proofs, since those 
of whom I speak and whom I knew in Switzerland, 
must still remember what I now affirm, and it seems 
to me that this opinion of the Swiss is sufficiently 
conclusive. 



37 

Vol. V. pages 92 and 93. — "England, he said, must have 
ended, by becoming an appendage to the France of my system. 
Nature has made it one of our islands, as well as Oleron and 
Corsica. " 

*.* Even if London had been lost, we would not, under so 
great a calamity, have despaired of the freedom of the coun- 
try." 

I commanded a brigade of the army of the coasts* 
united at this period against England, and I remem- 
ber, that when called upon to give my opinion upon 
this expedition, I replied that a maritime expedition 
unless it had the superiority at sea, appeared to me to be 
a contradiction. Nevertheless, let any one imagine, 
a French army of two hundred thousand men, laud- 
ing upon the English territory, and seizing upon the 
immense city of London, would he dare deny that if 
the liberty of the country had not even been lost, 
England would have suffered an immense and per- 
haps irreparable injury? It cannot be denied that 
the plan was well conceived; that the combined 
fleets of France and Spain were sufficient to sweep 
the channel, and to command there during the time 
necessary to seize upon London, and even to have 
conveyed the whole army back to France. 

Vol. V. page 111- — I deplore more than any one 
else the catastrophe of the Duke D'Enghien ; but 
as Napoleon has himself spoken of it, it does not 
become me to add another word. I shall only ob- 
serve that this affair is far from having been clear- 
ed up, that it was impossible that Napoleon should 
have brought the Prince to Paris to be immolated ; 
that he who established a Bourbon in Tuscanv, had 



38 

quite a contrary design, and one which could but 
be favourable ; else why cause so distinguished a 
Prince to make a journey to Paris when his pre- 
sence in traversing France could but be dangerous. 

If it be asked why the commendable design at- 
tributed to Napoleon was not followed up, and was 
so cruelly changed, I cannot explain ; but I am per- 
suaded that impartial history will one day reveal 
this secret. 

With respect to the prisoners of Jaffa, &c. (see 
Vol. IV. page 113,) Alexander in burning a city, in 
killing his friend and preceptor; Charlemagne in 
massacring millions of Saxons; Titus himself in 
surrounding his lines with crucified Jews, in assas- 
sinating Aulus Cecina on quitting a banquet because 
he had committed treason by destroying a million 
of Jews in the war with Judea; these facts have 
taught me to hold in contempt the renown of the 
conqueror, and even the victory, which is and can 
only be acquired by the commission of the greater 
part of these horrors. With respect to the other 
accusations brought against Napoleon, I may be 
permitted to recal to Sir Walter Scott his own 
maxim. 

Vol. IV. page 115.—" But though popular credulity eager- 
ly receives whatever stories are marked by the horrible and won- 
derful, history, on the contrary, demands direct evidence, and 
the existence of powerful motives, for whatever is beyond the 
ordinary bounds of credibility." 

If there ever was a man whose destiny was mark- 



39 

ed out even at his birth, that man was surely Napo- 
leon. As soon as he could comprehend it, and he 
did comprehend it on emerging from childhood, he 
proceeded in his career with as much genius as 
courage and ardour; but it is false that he allowed 
himself to be seduced by the sole love of power with- 
out any moral and great end; his intentions on the 
contrary were as great as they were noble and ge- 
nerous; I have heard him incessantly declare, that 
from him should date the era of representative govern- 
ments; that it was not necessary to do every thing by the 
people, but for the people, 8fc, that the abolition of pri- 
vileges, the equality of rights, that public and impartial 
justice were the foundations of all society, Src. But he 
passionately loved military fame and war; and an 
enthusiast for the glory and supremacy of France, 
he desired that every thing without exception should 
contribute towards this end. 

If he is not beyond the reach of criticism, I will 
even say, if he deceived himself, who amongst the 
great departed was more irreproachable than he ? 
Let us reflect upon the difficulties Napoleon had to 
overcome, the innumerable enemies, both external 
as well as internal, he had to combat, the snares of 
all kinds which were laid for him on every side, the 
continual tension of his mind, his incessant activi- 
ty, the extraordinary fatigues he had to encounter, 
and criticism will soon be absorbed by admiration. 

Vol. V. page 195 to 201. — The author blames 
the violation of the territory of Bareuth; but how 



40 

little these neutralities have been respected by con- 
querors ! Witness the invasion of Switzerland at 
the end of 1813, so fatal to France! 

The conduct of Prussia at the period of the bat- 
tle of Austerlitz was conformable to the wholesome 
policy which had so long connected this power with 
France. It is not for us, Frenchmen, to reproach 
her inaction at this important crisis, even while cri- 
ticizing her raising the shield before Jena. Until 
then Prussia had showed herself reasonable in not 
allowing herself to be dragged into new coalitions. 
It is unjustly and with untruth that she is reproach- 
ed with defection in 1813. What man of good 
faith could believe her alliance to be voluntary, and 
consequently real, when the country was reduced 
by our victories to the most deplorable condition ? 

Vol. V. page 207. — The author makes the little 
village of Saint Michel, near Verona, a city, as the 
mountain of Corona, near Rivoli. However pue- 
rile these inaccuracies may be, I cannot avoid re- 
marking them. 

Vol. V. page 262 to 263. — "Thus he imagines that the de- 
feat of the Nile might have been prevented, had the headmost 
vessels of the French line, instead of remaining at anchor, 
slipped their cables, and borne down to the assistance of those 
which were first attacked by the British. But in urging this, 
the leading principle of the manoeuvre of breaking the line, 
had totally escaped the French Emperor. It was the boast of 
the patriotic sage, who illustrated and recommended this most 
important system of naval tactics, that it could serve the pur- 
pose of a British fleet only. The general principle is briefly 



41 

this: — By breaking through the line, a certain number of ships 
are separated from the rest, which the remainder must either 
abandon to their fate by sailing away, or endeavour to save by 
bearing down, or doubling as it were upon the assailants, and 
engaging in a close and general engagement. Now, this last 
alternative is what Buonaparte recommends — what he would 
certainly have practised on land — and what he did practise, in 
order to extricate his right wing, at Marengo. But the relative 
superiority of the English navy is so great, that, while it is 
maintained, a close engagement with an enemy in the least ap- 
proaching to equality, is equivalent to a victory^ and to recom- 
mend a plan of tactics which should render such a battle in- 
evitable, would be, in other words, advising a French admiral 
to lose his whole fleet, instead of sacrificing those ships which 
the English manoeuvre had cut off, and crowding sail to save 
such as were yet unengaged." 

If it were permitted to a man whose only cam- 
paign at sea was that of Egypt in the vessel of 
Brueys, to speak of naval tactics, I could easily re- 
fute all that Sir Walter Scott has here said ; I shall 
limit myself to the relation of the observations 
made with General Kleber, when from the neigh- 
bouring coast we witnessed the battle of Aboukir. 
The greater part of our squadron remained inac- 
tive while the English turned the left ; there was 
not a single spectator who was not irritated at see- 
ing the six vessels on the right of the squadron, 
commanded by Brueys, keep their line, when if they 
had hoisted sail, and fallen back on the left, they 
would have put the English between two fires, and 
would certainly have gained the victory, as is easi- 
ly proved; for although the left was turned, the Ori- 
ent alone put hors de combat three English ships, 

and at the end of the battle the whole victorious 

6 



42 

squadron could not prevent Villeneuve from setting 
sail with two ships and two frigates, although these 
four vessels were warmly attacked. 

Every one ought without any doubt to defend the 
honour of his flag ; but the history of the French 
navy proves that it was to their tactics that the 
English sailors owed their superiority, and that ship 
to ship the victory was more frequently on the side 
of the French Marine. 

The author repeats (vol. V. page 262) some hi- 
deous accusations — it is thus he himself terms them — 
upon the manners of Napoleon and other members 
of my family. Nevertheless he adds immediately 
afterwards, that such enormities do not belong to 
the character of Bonaparte ; why then consign a 
place in his book to these hideous circumstances, 
so slightly proved and so little worthy of history ? 
This is the more astonishing, as the following re- 
markable passage appears in the same work : " We 
reject without hesitation an accusation too hideous to be 
mentioned, and which ought never to be named ivithout 
very evident proof to support it.'''' 

It is singular enough that he thus condemns him- 
self. 

He says on the subject of myself and brothers, 
(vol. V. page 254,) that we were " destined to form 
such political alliances as might best suit his views. 
They belonged, he said, in the decree creating 



**r. 



43 

them, entirely to the country, and must therefore 
lay aside every sentiment of individual feeling, when 
the public weal required such a sacrifice." We read 
further on — 

Vol. V. page 262. — " Germany also was doomed to find more 
than one appanage for the Buonaparte family. " 

Vol. V. page 268. — "At this period also Buonaparte began 
first to display a desire of engrafting his family upon the an- 
cient dynasties of Europe." 

Vol. V. page 209. — " He distributed crowns among his kin- 
folks as ordinary men give vails to their domestics." 

It would be difficult to make these different asser- 
tions agree. The truth is, Napoleon never wished 
or pretended to give appanages, but to act as he 
thought right towards France, and this design was 
as great as it was noble and generous ; exaggera- 
tion only deforms- it. 

Vol. V. page 266.—" In devolving the crown of Holland on 
the son of Louis, after the abdication of Louis," &c. 

This inadvertency is too strong. After my abdi- 
cation the crown belonged to my eldest son ; I left 
it to him. I had caused him to be acknowledged ; 
but so far from giving it to him, it was not even re- 
served for him ; it was taken from him, Holland 
was re-united to France, and my son removed to 
Paris. 

No doubt it is allowable to write historical ro- 
mances thus, but not historv. 



If 

Vol. V. page 337. — 4 * Napoleon declared, according to his 
usual form of dethronement, that the house of Hesse-Cassel had 
ceased to reign. The doom was executed even before it was 
pronounced. Louis Bonaparte, with Marshal Mortier, had 
possessed himself of Hesse-Cassel by the first of November. 

This is not correct ; I had put myself at this pe- 
riod at the head of my own troops and some French 
regiments then in Holland, because the Emperor 
required the King of Holland, to form a combined 
army at Wesel, under the title of the army of the 
North. Endeavouring as much as possible to re- 
concile my very different duties, I marched towards 
Cassel at the orders of Marshal Mortier, who was 
advancing upon Mayence with a small number of 
troops. When I approached Cassel, Marshal Mor- 
tier had entered the evening before. I immediate- 
ly halted the body of the army before I entered the 
town, and leaving the French troops under the com- 
mand of Marshal Mortier, I retook the route to 
Holland with the Dutch. 

I caused the Elector to be informed by the Baron 
de Gilsa, despatched before me, that I entreated this 
sovereign not to quit his states, under the risk of 
losing them ; but he erroneously distrusted this ad- 
vice, and when I arrived within sight of Cassel the 
Elector was gone, and Marshal Mortier had occu- 
pied the town since the previous evening. If the 
Elector had taken my advice and remained at 
Cassel, he would probably not then have lost his 
states. 

I only passed the night at Cassel, at the house of 




45 

the French minister, and departed thence after hav- 
ing paid a visit to the Electress. 

I do not believe Napoleon then intended to erect 
Hesse into a kingdom; but on attacking Prussia 
he would not leave the Elector, a Prussian gene- 
ral, at the head of an army and of a warlike popu- 
lation, in the rear of the French army. He could, 
and perhaps he ought, to have taken military pos- 
session of Hesse, as the Elector was a general in 
the service of Prussia, with whom France was at 
war ; but he must have confined himself to this, and 
no doubt Napoleon would so have restricted him- 
self if the Elector had remained in his capital, in 
compliance with the advice I gave him. I cannot 
imagine why the author did not consult the Docu- 
ments upon Holland, relating to what personally re- 
gards myself. 

Vol. V. pages 346, 347. " Douaniers, magistrates, generals, 
and prefects, nay, some of the kindred princes of the house of 
Napoleon, were well pleased to listen to the small still voice 
of their interest, rather than to his authoritative commands; and 
the British commerce, though charged with heavy expenses, 
continued to flourish in spite of the continental system.'' 

The accusation thus brought might also fall upon 
me; and although I consider myself beyond the 
reach of such calumnies, I must declare, in answer 
to the frequent insinuations made during and even 
since the reign of my brother, that such an accusa- 
tion is as false as it is inconceivable. I declare I 
was in no manner a partisan of the continental sys- 
tem ; first, because it injured Holland more than it 



46 

did England, and it was the interest of Holland 
which concerned me most deeply ; and in the second 
place, because this system, though true in theory, 
was false in its application. 

I compare it to a sieve, a single hole is sufficient 
to render it incapable of containing any thing. 

The continental system being acted upon in most 
countries, must have produced more beneficial re- 
sults in those points where it was not maintained, 
and thus it was with respect to the advantages it 
conferred upon English commerce, mentioned by 
W alter Scott. It was this which gave France the 
means of benefiting her merchants, to the injury of 
those of other countries, who had not the power to 
open and shut their ports at will. 

It will consequently be supposed that I could 
only lend myself partially without zeal or pleasure 
to the continental system, since it was both against 
my own opinion and against the interest of the 
country, and I was convinced of its inefficacy against 
England; but at the same time I may declare, 
since all this is now a mere matter of history, that 
I did not hesitate to obey all that was required with 
respect to the pretended blockade of England, but 
I repeat that it was against my own opinion, and 
consequently without zeal and without pleasure. 

Vol. V. page 351. — We have here a critique upon 
the policy of Napoleon towards Poland, which I 



47 

shall not stop to examine. It is but too easy to 
criticise the actions of statesmen, when time in its 
rapid course has unveiled the causes and effects of 
events : when the game is finished, the spectators 
have no longer any credit in discovering what the 
players ought to have done. 

Vol. V. page 402. — " Russia ceded the Lordship of Jever 
to Holland, as an ostensible compensation for her new acquisi- 
tion." 

This does not appear to me to be correct ; accord- 
ing to the terms of the treaty, this country was 
ceded personally to me, and my first act was to 
unite it to Holland. I establish this fact merely for 
the sake of truth. 



VOLUME VI. 

Pages 42, 43. " Those who practise calumny know, accord- 
ing to the vulgar expression, that if they do but throw dirt suf- 
ficient, some part of it will adhere.'' 

It is no doubt for this reason that the author has 
accumulated all the follies uttered against Napo- 
leon during thirty years. He was, as he avows, 
not ignorant of this vulgar maxim. 

Vol. VI. page 113. " So much did lie (Napoleon) rely upon 
the celerity of movement, that if an officer asked time to exe- 
cute any of his commands, it was frequently his remarkable 
answer—' Ask me for any thing except time.' That celerity 



*■ 



18 

depended on the uncompromising system of forced marches, 
without established magazines, and we have described how 
wasteful it must have been to human life." 



> 



This is false ; activity of movement and rapidity 
of attack are as conducive to the well-being of 
mankind as they are favourable to victory. 

Where has he learned that the system of forced 
marches pursued by the Emperor Napoleon was al- 
ways without magazines ? On the contrary, his ad- 
ministrative system was admirable, and his calcula- 
tions on this head worthy of his plans; without the 
one the other could not have succeeded. 

That an author who is not a soldier may accu- 
mulate blunders, calumnies, and erroneous theories 
upon the civil and political actions of him of whom 
lie calls himself the historian, I can readily con- 
ceive, but I confess I cannot conceive, how he dare 
criticise the systems, theory and tactics of an army 
and a leader who were almost always invincible, 
who were constantly the models and admiration 
even of their enemies, of all true soldiers, although 
not of those who treat of subjects of which they 
have always been ignorant. 

And here we may make a melancholy reflection, 
that fame is not only vain but often painful, since it 
exposes those who have attained it by so much la- 
bour, so many fatigues, and lofty deeds, to be the 
sport of idleness, of malignity, and calumny. 



49 

Vol. VI. page 1£0. — " Nor is England interested in depriv- 
ing other states of their fleets or their armies.'' 

We can but be astonished at the boldness of this 
assertion; why then did she once seize upon the 
Danish fleet? Did France in the zenith of her 
power ever commit so blameable an act ? 

Vol. VI. page 173. — "It was said that the subordinate par- 
ties (Joseph and Murat) were alike disappointed with the parts 
assigned them in this masque of sovereigns/" 

I refer to Madame de Stael to state what then 
passed ; but nevertheless I demand of the libellers 
when these vicissitudes and changes will, according 
to them, cease to deserve this name ? When have 
they ever taken place without the estates and des- 
tinies of man becoming the price of them? These 
masquerades, like all the affairs of this world, cease 
to be farcical only through the justice and humani- 
ty, or the integrity of individuals. 

Vol. VI. page 336. — "But the French saw the necessity of 
treading out this spark, which might so easily have excited a 
conflagration. A large force of Dutch and Danish troops ad- 
vanced to Stralsund on the 31st of May, and in their turn forced 
their way into the place.'' 

I must here observe that it was the Dutch them- 
selves, who, stationed in Westphalia, marched 
against and seized upon Stralsund : the Danes as- 
sisted the Dutch. 

Vol. VI. page 345.—" Next we must point out the extreme 
inconsistency betwixt the praise assigned to Napoleon as the 






% 



S50 

destroyer of revolutionary practices, the friend and supporter 
of tottering thrones, and that which is at the same time claimed 
for him by himself and his advocates, as the actual Messias of 
the said revolution, whose name was to be distinguished by pos- 
terity as being connected with it." 

Let the reader take the trouble of comparing 
what is here said with page 208 of vol. VIII. quoted 
in these observations, and he will be convinced of 
the most manifest contradiction. — " Whose name was 
to be distinguished by posterity as being connected with 
it!!!" 

Here then stands confessed the intention of the 
singular historian of Napoleon, that of charging 
him in the eyes of posterity with the excess and 
horror of the revolution; but it is not thus that Na- 
poleon will be signalized to posterity. The author 
would manifest too little judgment and memory if 
he really believed it. 

He confounds also the object of the revolution 
with its horrors. Napoleon may well have said un- 
contradicted, that from him would date the era of re- 
presentative governments — that is to say, of monar- 
chical governments, but founded upon the laws. He 
might have added, without contradiction or exagge- 
ration, that he had put an end to the atrocities of 
the revolution and to popular fury, the renewal of 
which he prevented. 

Exaggeration is the enemy of truth ; those who 
would prove too much, prove nothing. Impartial 
posterity will perhaps reproach Napoleon with not 



51 

having kept an even way between the weakness of 
Louis XVI. and an inflexible firmness. It will re- 
proach him with not having confided the preserva- 
tion of the rights and the newly-obtained advan- 
tages of the nation to fundamental and stable laws, 
instead of making them rest solely on his own ex- 
istence. But I am greatly deceived if it will con- 
firm the prediction of the author — but I believe that 
it will divide the good and the advantages of the 
French revolution from its excesses and horrors, the 
end and suppression of which it will attribute to 
Napoleon. 

Vol. VI. page 357. — "Bernadotte hesitated to accept the 
defence of Antwerp) but having at length done so, he availed 
himself of the time afforded by the English to put the place in 
a complete state of defence, and assembled within, and under 
its walls, above thirty thousand men. The country was inun- 
dated by opening the sluicesj strong batteries were erected on 
both sides of the Scheldt, and the ascending that river became 
almost impossible.'' 

Let me be allowed here to repeat what I have 
said on this subject in the Documents sur la Hol- 
lande, and to correct some inaccuracies. 

It was not Bernadotte whom the Arch-Chancel- 
cellor Cambaceres and the Duke de Feltre, minis- 
ter of war, requested to undertake the defence of 
Antwerp, but it was I who received several couriers 
on this subject, and who in fact took the command 
of the combined army, sufficiently in time to pre- 
vent the English surprising Antwerp as they already 
had done Walcheren. It was I who flooded the 




92 

borders of the Scheldt and erected batteries there. 
Although Holland was without troops, since I was 
compelled to keep them in Westphalia, I found 
means by an appeal to the nation to assemble suffi- 
cient troops at Bergen-op-Zoom, in the island of 
Lower Beveland, and under the walls of Antwerp, 
to cover all this part and to prevent the English from 
making any progress. The Prince de Ponte-Corvo 
arrived a fortnight afterwards, and in pursuance of 
the orders of the Emperor and the Duke de Feltre, 
which were officially communicated to me, I re- 
signed the command to him. It is thus proved that 
it was the Emperor himself who nominated the 
Prince de Ponte-Corvo, and that all that has been 
published on this subject in the libels, and chiefly 
in the memoirs of Fouche, is perfectly false. I am 
surprised to find such mistakes in a work calling it- 
self historical. 

Vol. VI. pages 364, 365. — " Napoleon was himself an Ita- 
lian, and showed his sense of his origin by the particular care 
which he always took of that nation, where, whatever benefits 
his administration conferred on the people, reached them both 
more profusely and more directly than in any other part of his 
empire. That swelling spirit entertained the proud, and could 
it have been accomplished consistently with justice, the noble 
idea, of uniting the beautiful peninsula of Italy into one king- 
dom, of which Rome should once more be the capital. He 
also nourished the hope of clearing out the Eternal City from 
the ruins in which she was buried, of preserving her ancient 
monuments, and of restoring what was possible of her ancient 
splendour. Such ideas as these, dearer to Napoleon, because 
involving a sort of fame which no conquest elsewhere could be 
attended with, must have had charms for a mind which constant 
success had palled to the ordinary enjoyment of victory; and 



no doubt the recollection that the existence of the Pope as a 
temporal prince was totally inconsistent with this fair dream of 
the restoration of Rome and Italy, determined his resolution 
to put an end to his power." 

The observations to be made on this passage are 
numerous ; I must therefore limit them. 

Napoleon was of Italian origin, but he was born 
a Frenchman. Perhaps it may be asked for what 
purpose are these continual repetitions of his Italian 
origin? and in truth it is difficult to comprehend their 
end. His partiality for Italy was natural enough, 
since he had conquered it, and this beautiful penin- 
sula was a trophy of the national glory, of which 
Walter Scott allows Napoleon to have been very 
jealous. 

I nevertheless doubt whether he had the intention 
of uniting Italy and making Rome its capital; many 
actions of Napoleon's contradict these suppositions 
of the author. 

1 was near him one day when he received by an 
aide-de-camp from General Soult (if I mistake not) 
the report of some victories in Spain, and amongst 
others of one in which the Italian troops had greatly 
distinguished themselves. One of the persons who 
were with him exclaimed at this news — that the 
Italians would show themselves worthy of obtaining 
their independence, and it was to be desired that 
the whole of Italy should be united into one national 
body. Heaven prevent it (cried Napoleon, with 
spontaneous and involuntary emotion) they would 

SOON BE MASTERS OP THE GAULS. 



51 

With regard to the removal of the monuments 
of antiquity, and to the works undertaken for their 
preservation, they were not merely projected ; they 
were not only begun, but even far advanced, and 
many of them finished. The works which have 
been completed since the time of Napoleon were 
finished upon the plans left by him. 

If Walter Scott had been in Italy and at Rome 
in 1814, he must have known that on this head I 
advance nothing but what is true ; and if he was 
not there, the greater number of his countrymen 
who travelled in Italy at that period can contradict 
him. 

Amongst all the calumnies accumulated against 
Napoleon, there are none more unjust or false than 
those which attack his patriotism ; he was essen- 
tially French, indeed too exclusively so ; all excess 
is bad. 



VOLUME VII. 

Vol. VII. page 65. — The idea of endeavouring to know on 
what terms peace could be obtained, had occurred to Napoleon 
as well as to Fouche, and the Sovereign, on his part, unsuc- 
cessful as he had been on two occasions, in his attempt to open 
a personal correspondence with the King of England, had fol- 
lowed the steps of his minister, in making Monsieur Labou- 
chere, a commercial person, agent of a great Dutch mercantile 
establishment, the medium of communication with the British 
government. The consequence was, that Ouvrard and the 



' 55 

agent of the Emperor, neither of whom knew of the other's 
mission, entered about the same time into correspondence with 
the Marquis Wellesley, who returned from his Spanish mission, 
was now Secretary at War. The British statesman, surprised 
at this double application, became naturally suspicious of some 
intended deception, and broke off all correspondence both with 
Ouvrard and his competitor for the office of negotiator. 

"Napoleon must naturally have been so highly incensed 
with Fouche, for tampering without his consent in a matter of 
such vital consequence, that one is almost surprised to find 
him limiting the effects of his resentment to disgracing the mi- 
nister. He sent for Fouche, and having extorted from him an 
avowel of his secret negotiation, he remarked, ' So, then, you 
make peace or war without my leave?' " 

Although the author does not mention me, I am 
able to speak pertinently to this affair ; the follow- 
ing is the truth : — 

I went to Paris from Holland in 1 809, against my 
inclination, to comply with the wish of the princi- 
pal Dutch, who imagined that I could prevent or at 
least adjourn by my presence in Paris, and my im- 
mediate efforts, the very visible intention of seizing 
upon Holland. 

During my stay at Paris, I was persuaded that 
all the tricks, the attacks and ill-treatment of which 
I was the object, had not for their real end the 
union of Holland, since it was the interest of France 
to aggrandize that kingdom, but that it was a poli- 
tical stratagem, to induce the English government 
to report its decrees of council and to conclude the 
peace; and I was therefore prevailed upon while in 
Paris, to send M. La Bouchere from Amsterdam to 



56 

London with instructions to make known to the 
Marquis Wellesley, that if England did not report 
its decrees of council the union of Holland, with 
France, would be inevitable. 

The reply of the Marquis proved at once how 
favourable and agreeable my government in Hol- 
land had been to France, since the English govern- 
ment declared, that the fate of Holland coxdd not fail 
to occasion much interest in England} but that in the 
present state of that country the influence of France was 
so entire there, that the political change spoken of must 
have some weight in the determination of the British Ca- 
binet. 

This attempt, like all those I made during my 
stay at Paris, having proved useless, I could only 
succeed in delaying the union of Holland, the de- 
cree for which being prepared beforehand, and al- 
ways in readiness, was often placed before me. by 
sacrificing Brabant and Zealand. 



■^ 



I returned to Amsterdam after this, as after the 
loss of a most disastrous battle, but I still hoped to 
be able to prolong the nominal existence of the 
kingdom until the general peace, which I believed 
would follow upon the new marriage. In the mean- 
while I was requested at Amsterdam to allow M. 
Ouvrard a passage to England. I consented to this 
the more willingly as I imagined that it was in con- 
sequence of the step I had already taken in sending 
M. La Bouchere to London. 



Ot 



A short time after the Emperor visited Antwerp 
and the provinces he had taken from Holland, I 
was with him in that city, in order to prevent his 
coming into the provinces still left to the kingdom. 

Whilst I conversed with the Emperor, and re- 
pulsed with difficulty, but not without grief and dis- 
gust, the incessant complaints as unjust as they 
were false, of the communications which still exist- 
ed between England and the coast of Holland, I 
assured him that since my return from Paris, there 
had been no communication with England except 
that which had taken place through M. Ouvrard, ac- 
cording to his request. My astonishment was ex- 
treme on learning that not only it was without his 
request, but that he was even ignorant of it, and 
from that moment he determined on the discharge 
of the Duke of Otranto, Fouche, as minister of the 
Police, who had allowed so singular a proceeding. 

Vol. VII. page 77 to 87. — I am sincerely grateful 
for the manner in which the author expresses him- 
self in my behalf, at the end of the third chapter, 
but I think it necessary to add this short explana- 
tion; if, by the treaty of the 16th of March, 1820, 
the union of Holland was retarded, it was only at 
the price of the cession of Brabant and Zealand, 
and in sacrificing what I considered the welfare of 
the country, and even my rank. 

It was not as the author says, commercial affairs 
alone which caused me continual discussion and 

8 



58 

torment, but all the affairs of the country as soon 
as they became favourable to its well-being and its 
political consolidation, because I cannot conceal it, 
and besides I should endeavour in vain to do so, 
the policy of the time was diametrically opposed to 
me, since its end, both in regard to the interior and 
exterior, whether in an open or secret manner, only 
tended to make this country fall of itself into the 
boundaries of the great empire. 

It has been said, and the author here repeats it 
t%) lightly, that I lived in my retreat at Gratz after 
my abdication on a moderate pension, &c. 

This is not correct; I did not, nor could not, re- 
ceive a pension from any one ; my revenue was de- 
rived principally from the sale of my decorations 
and jewels, and the interest of the obligations I had 
taken upon me in order to encourage the loan from 
Holland to Prussia at the time of the greatest mis- 
fortunes of the virtuous sovereign of that country, 
who, in spite of all opposition and every political 
consideration, was anxious to acquit himself towards 
me with scrupulous exactitude. 

The eulogium which Walter Scott would here be- 
stow upon me, proves his hostile sentiments towards 
Napoleon and all who bear his naflie. 

He says that / differed in sentiment from my brother 
only in regard to the continental system. The result of 



59 

such an assertion would be too detrimental for me 
not to be anxious to remove it. 

The reproaches or the criticisms addressed to a 
hero who has achieved so many great actions, the 
memory of which alone will be immortal, would to- 
tally annihilate the name and memory of a man like 
myself, who limited his fame to avoiding evil and 
doing some good. But Walter Scott will not leave 
me this feeble portion, and only consents to praise 
when it may injure my brother ; I may therefore be 
permitted to reject it. 

It was not only upon the continental system that 
we differed in opinion, but upon all which concern- 
ed Holland, the conscription, religion, war, com- 
merce, &c. Perhaps I may be deceived, but it ap- 
pears to me to be proved by experience, that if my 
opinion had been followed, Napoleon would still 
have been upon the throne. 

I had wished, since a great state must necessari- 
ly exercise vast influence over others, that this in- 
fluence should be the result of friendship, good un- 
derstanding, reciprocal inclination, and the benevo- 
lence of the greater towards the lesser, in order 
that the interests of the latter should be found to 
agree with its inclination. 

I detest as much as any one fanaticism, intoler- 
ance, prejudice ; but I would only have desired re- 
form in the article of religion, the most essential of 



bo 

all, and that with the consent of the church, and 
the head of the church ; I have thought that every 
sensible man, and above all the chief of the state, 
should set an example of implicit obedience to the 
established forms. 

I was wrong about the war and the conscription, 
since I confess to have entertained on this head, 
even from my infancy, exaggerated ideas which un- 
fortunately, experience instead of destroying, has 
only confirmed. 

I have been as enthusiastic and joyful as any one 
else after a victory ; but I also confess that even 
then the sight of a field of battle has not only struck 
me with horror, but even turned me sick ; and now 
that I am advanced in life, I cannot understand any 
more than I could at fifteen years of age, how be- 
ings who call themselves reasonable, and who have 
so much foresight, can employ this short existence, 
not in loving and aiding each other and passing 
through it as gently as possible, but on the contra- 
ry, in endeavouring to destroy each other, as if time 
did not himself do this with sufficient rapidity ! 

What I thought at fifteen years of age, I still 
think ; war and the pain of death which society draws 
down upon itself are but organized barbarisms, an inhe- 
ritance of the savage state, disguised or ornamented by 
ingenious institutions and false eloquence. 

I participated in the just ideas of the Dutch re- 



61 

lating to commerce and the rights of nations; I 
wished for the liberty of the former, and to facili- 
tate it by all possible but legitimate means. With 
respect to the second, I thought that friendship and 
treaties ought to be founded upon reciprocal utility? 
without considering the difference of strength and 
power in the contracting parties. 

The attack upon Russia was so hazardous, that I 
cannot conceive how the Emperor Napoleon could 
decide upon it. I may be deceived, but I am inter- 
nally convinced that this gigantic enterprise, as 
well as the affair of Spain, the invasion of Hol- 
land, and that of the States of the Church, were 
snares into which he was dragged by his extreme 
love of glory, and by a passion quite as immea- 
surable for the greatness and supremacy of France, 

I had warned him for many years against two 
classes of enemies, the one, and perhaps both, re- 
presented by Fouche, who made golden bridges to 
withdraw his brothers from and to isolate Napo- 
leon, in order to pursue with greater facility, the 
slow and gradual attacks upon his power and glo- 
ry. Nevertheless in this campaign he surpassed 
himself. 

Whatever might be the talent of the young and 
brilliant Segur, an officer cherished and distin- 
guished by Napoleon, whom he ever followed as 
his Mareschal-des-logis, that is to say, almost in 
the capacity of his Aide-de-camp, this, even the 



62 

book of M. de Segur proves, contrary to the inten- 
tion of the author, since he shows that almost all 
the generals were discouraged and alarmed at so 
great an undertaking, and that Napoleon alone ne- 
ver varied. 

It was a spectacle unheard of in history, that of 
an army struggling in immense deserts, against na- 
ture, against innumerable enemies, who surrounded 
it on all sides, and every sort of suffering and pri- 
vation. 

It was a stilt greater spectacle, that of a chief, 
who by the force of his character, his activity and 
his genius, succeeded in rescuing himself from these 
enormous dangers. No — such a mind had lost nei- 
ther its faculties nor its genius, and those who so 
accuse him, are as unjust as they are mean, since 
they display him rescued from these perils, after 
having persisted singly in the first idea of his en- 
terprise, after having combated contrary opinions, 
and proved himself not to be cast down by reverses 
almost above the power of human nature to sup- 
port. His losses were prodigious, but what was 
more prodigious was the way in which the French 
army extricated itself from the most frightful catas- 
trophies on the plains of Lutzen and Bautzen, where 
newly raised legions of conscripts, not only resisted 
but vanquished the old troops of Russia and Prus- 
sia, and an innumerable cavalry, and where Napo- 
leon supplied the almost total loss of his artillery by 
heavy pieces of besieging ordnance. Let the pro- 



63 

fessed author of the History of Italy from 1789 to 
1814, let the celebrated author of the historical ro- 
mances, and so many other writers, who in their 
works go so far as to give lessons on tactics to the 
greatest tactician known since the world has ex- 
isted — let these reproach such a man with having 
lost his reason, and treat him as Jupiter Scapin; as 
for me I think, and many others will be of my opi- 
nion, that such works prove rather that their au- 
thors have lost their senses, or that they write un- 
der the dishonourable influence of enmity and 
envy. 

I am, as may be perceived, far from approving 
the expedition to Russia ; but one must be blinded 
by animosity not to allow that resistance to the pro- 
digious aggrandisement of this empire, and to the 
gigantic influence* which menaced the whole of Eu- 
rope, was a great, a politic, and a generous idea. 
Some young Russian officers, whom I had occasion 
to meet at the baths of Marienbad, in Bohemia, 
remarked in their youthful and perhaps imprudent 
but chivalrous and just language, it is we who are 
now Romans. Let us imagine the Russians masters 
of Constantinople, and who dare maintain that 
they will not become such of all Europe, not here- 
after, but perhaps immediately, as they would pos- 
sess an incontestable supremacy both by land and 
sea. As soon as Constantinople shall be in the 
power of the great Empire of the North, which 
will necessarily exercise a great influence over 
Greece, the English power at sea must soon give 



64 

way ; and this is easy enough to prove, now that 
maritime exploits, or rather the prodigies of the 
Greeks in weak barks and light fire-ships, give 
token of what the same men would achieve when 
forming part of the navy of a great empire. The 
expedition to Russia, although bold, gigantic, and 
perhaps imprudent, without the re-establishment 
and aid of Poland, was nevertheless a great, he- 
roic, and profoundly politic idea. 

It is impossible that Napoleon should not have 
known, that if he succeeded in restraining the co- 
lossal power of that empire, or at least in prevent- 
ing its enlargement, Poland would naturally have 
been re-constituted ; and besides this would justify 
him for having conceded to Austria the adjourn- 
ment of the re-establishment of the Polish -king- 
dom. 

Vol. VII. page 1 67, &c— If all that the author 
here relates concerning the connexion between Swe- 
den and France were true, the Emperor Napoleon 
would have been justified in his resentment and in 
his presages of the events which followed. 

I do not pretend to blame the conduct of the 
Prince Royal of Sweden, for in quitting France he 
broke all ties with her, as he proves by his corres- 
pondence; nor do I pretend to rest my reproaches 
on his having been allied to our family. Who does 
not know how little these ties of family and rela- 
tionship weigh against political relations? 



' 65 

The following passage closes these false and ca- 
lumnious assertions. 

Vol. VII. page 172. — "But this does not appear to have 
been in Buonaparte's nature, who, if he remembered benefits, 
had also a tenacious recollection of enmities, said to be peculiar 
to the natives of Corsica. When this feeling obtained the as- 
cendancy, he was too apt to sacrifice his policy to his spleen." 



If such had really been the character of Napo- 
leon, would he not have had the means of prevent- 
ing the Prince Royal of Sweden from accepting 
the high rank to which he was called? Did he sa- 
crifice his policy to his vengeance ? he who, after 
so often having seized upon his greatest enemies, 
restored them untouched ? he who at the period of 
his marriage sacrificed his affections and placed on 
the throne which had cost so many toils and victo- 
ries, the daughter of his enemy? he, in short, who 
betrayed a second time by fortune, sought an asy- 
lum with, and delivered himself up to the oldest, 
the most powerful, and most infuriated of his ene- 
mies ? He will rather deserve the reproach of pos- 
terity for having been too facile after victory. 

Vol. VII. page 173. — All that the author states 
relative to the injurious treatment of Prussia, &c. 
but chiefly concerning the injuries of the incom- 
parable Queen of Prussia is just ; I do not pretend 
to say that Napoleon was without passions ; great 
men, however great they may be, have evils, errors, 
and faults to reproach themselves with, since they 
are but men ; those who believe themselves exempt 

9 



6li 

from them, are never so little above humanity as 
when they set up so ridiculous a pretence. Prussia 
is the inseparable friend and ally of France. When 
policy is just, it cannot alter by age. 

Vol. VII. page 229. — The non-establishment of 
Poland was, in my opinion, one of the chief causes 
of Napoleon's misfortunes; and if it be true, this 
re-establishment was rendered impossible, in con- 
sequence of his recent connexion with Austria, as 
it would have had the infallible result of arming his 
father-in-law against him ; it is no less true, that 
this question was intimately connected with the ex- 
pedition to Russia, which was rendered fruitless 
without the basis of Poland and the aid of its brave 
army, accustomed to the rigours of a Northern cli- 
mate. 

Vol. VII. page 238.—" All seem to have been sensible of an 
unusual slowness in Napoleon's motions on this important oc- 
casion ; and Segur attributes it to a premature decay of consti- 
tution, of which however, we see no traces in the campaigns of 
1813 and 1814." 

How does it happen that the English author is 
more just towards Napoleon than one of his gene- 
rals? The author allows here what I have already 
observed — namely, the inconceivable accusation 
brought against the faculties of Napoleon at a time 
when he showed so much energy and perseverance, 
and when he not only resisted and extricated him- 
self from the most frightful reverses imaginable, but 
even rose from them with surprising splendour. 



67 

In an operation as gigantic as the attack upon 
Russia, in a plan for the boldest campaign, prudence 
and extreme slowness were imperative. How then, 
under such circumstances, can a general officer, a 
pupil as it were, of Napoleon, criticise his stay at 
Wilna and the extraordinary slowness of his move- 
ments ? 

Would to Heaven that this delay had been carried 
far enough to prevent the grand army from cross- 
ing the Dnieper during this campaign ! but the great 
inconvenience to Napoleon, as general of the grand 
army, was the necessity of not prolonging his ab- 
sence from Paris, and consequently of terminating 
the campaign as quickly as possible; and this was 
another powerful reason why he should not have 
hazarded so distant an expedition. 

Vol. VII. pages 39 'f and 398.—" On the 18th, in the eve- 
ning, he arrived at Paris, where the city had been for two days 
agitated by the circulation of the 29th Bulletin, in which the 
veil, though with a reluctant hand, was raised up to show the 
disasters of the Russian war." 

The author would certainly be singular in his 
opinion, if he did not do justice to the grandeur, 
simplicity, and frankness of the twenty-ninth bulle- 
tin, in which the most overwhelming disasters are 
related in the most sublime manner. 

It is not writing history, when, as in this instance, 
the author's talent is employed to alter truth, and to 
sully not only the actions but even the writings of 
him of whom he calls himself the historian. 



G8 

The twenty-ninth bulletin was not written with 
repugnance, but with profound resignation and a 
noble frankness, worthy of the event. 

If the author wished to signify that Napoleon 
felt repugnance in relating his disasters, it was na- 
tural enough for him to do so ; but the accusation 
is both unjust and false, for his enemies have re- 
proached him with too much naivete in this bulle- 
tin, and have exclaimed, " To what purpose is it thus 
profoundly to afflict and alarm the whole nation V 

Vol. VII. page 412, &c. — The author here gives 
free scope to his resentment against the Emperor 
and against France, by exaggerating the disasters 
of the Russian campaign, so painful not only to the 
French, but to all those who have a humane heart; 
he estimates the loss of the grand army at two hun- 
dred and fifty thousand men, not including priso- 
ners, and it is but too true that the greater part 
were French. If any thing could be a consolation 
under so great a calamity, it was the conviction 
that not a man of the grand army ought to have 
escaped. 

The author takes great pains to prove that the 
extraordinary severity of the winter was not the 
principal cause of this frightful catastrophe. He is 
facetious about the snow, to which he believes, or 
pretends to believe, that the twenty-ninth bulletin 
attributes the disaster ; nevertheless it was not the 
snow alone, but a cold of thirty degrees. Besides. 



69 

have we not often known in the severe winters of 
the North of France, where the cold is but slight 
in comparison with that of Russia, have we not fre- 
quently known, I repeat, travellers to perish under 
the snow ? How then can it be denied that the ex- 
traordinary severity of the winter was the cause of 
the disaster, when the horses all perished in one 
night, and consequently the army was without ar- 
tillery, and without cavalry; when whole corps 
were stiffened and fell without the power of using 
their arms ? 

Vol. VII. page 421.—" What, then, occasioned this most ca- 
lamitous catastrophe ? We venture to reply, that a moral er- 
ror, or rather a crime, converted Napoleon's wisdom into folly.'' 

The author has not the merit of novelty in this 
outrage ; and what is more painful, French writers 
have been guilty of repeating so ridiculous an ac- 
cusation. What! he who threw himself upon his 
gigantic adversary at the head of an innumerable 
army, and conducted it six hundred leagues from 
his country ; who defeated all the armies of his ene- 
my, burned his capital, or was the cause of its de- 
struction, as Walter Scott himself expresses it — had 
such a man lost his senses ? Is it not rather he or 
those who imagined a calumny which is so fully 
contradicted by an activity, energy, and genius, of 
which Napoleon never gave greater proofs ? 

Let me be allowed here to repeat what I have 
already remarked. The expedition to Russia, ac- 
cording to common rules, was ill-judged and rash. 



70 

and the more so when undertaken without the ba- 
sis of Poland; and when we consider the formation 
of the grand army, composed of so many different 
nations ; when we again remember that Napoleon, 
almost alone, persisted in the project which he con- 
ceived and executed in spite of all obstacles and all 
the opposition and discouragement of the greater 
number of his most valiant officers, we are asto- 
nished how he succeeded in invading a great por- 
tion of the vast territory of Russia, and penetra- 
ting as far as the capital of that empire. In spite 
of critics, whatever his enemies may assert, had it 
not been for the extraordinary havoc of the winter, 
the grand army would have returned to the frontiers 
of Poland, have cantoned and established itself on 
that line, and menaced the Russian empire anew 
and in a more definitive manner during the follow- 
ing campaign. 

Vol. VIIL pages 429 and 430. — "But during the length of 
Napoleon's absence on the Russian expedition, a plot was form- 
ed, which served to show how little firm was the hold which 
the system of the Imperial government had on the feelings of 
the nation; by what slight means its fall might be effected, and 
how small an interest a new revolution would have excited," &c. 

I shall make two observations on this article : 

1st. — I am persuaded that this conspiracy was the 
work of the Jacobin faction, who always laid in wait 
to profit by every favourable occasion. This opin- 
ion is confirmed by many of the avowals which es- 
caped Fouche in his Memoirs, 



11 

2d. — The fallacy of the sentiments attributed by 
the English author to the nation, with respect to 
Napoleon, is proved by the slight success of this 
conspiracy when he was not only absent but, as well 
as his armies, at so considerable a distance from 
France ; it is also proved by his return from the 
island of Elba, in the month of March, 1815. I 
think that all those who would after this deny the 
attachment of the nation to the Emperor, would 
also deny the light of day. 

Vol. VII. page 439. — The author here repeats the 
false assertions of the libellers upon the personal 
ill-treatment the Pope experienced from the Empe- 
ror Napoleon ; and I can confirm their fallacy. 

I knew Pope Pius the Seventh from the time of 
his journey to Paris in 1804, and from that period 
until his death I have never ceased to receive from 
the venerable Pontiff marks, not of benevolence 
only, but even of confidence and. affection. 

Since the year 1814 I have inhabited Rome; I 
have often had occasion to see him, and I can af- 
firm that in the greatest number of my interviews 
with his Holiness, he has assured me that he was 
treated by the Emperor Napoleon, in every person- 
al respect, as he could have wished. These are his 
words — 

" Persomlmente non ho avuto di che dolermi; non ho 
mai maneato di nulla ; la mia persona fu sempre rispet- 
tata e trattata in modo da non potermi lagnare" 



72 

"J have had nothing to complain of personally ; I 
wanted for nothing; my person was always respected, 
and treated in a way to afford me no ground of com- 
plaint.'''' 

Vol. VII. page 493. — "Alas!" said Augereau to Fouche, 
" how little do the two actions of which they make so much at 
Paris resemble our victories in Italy, when I taught Buonaparte 
the art of war, which he now abuses," &c. 

If the desire to sully the fame of Napoleon was 
not visible from the commencement of this work, 
we should here have evident proof of it. Calumny 
is, without doubt, as adroit in its attack as it is ef- 
ficacious, for it always leaves something in its pas- 
sage. If Augereau did utter such nonsense, he 
would have bestowed upon himself the double 
charge of folly and absurdity. Augereau did not 
know Napoleon until the latter had become a ge- 
neral-in-chief; and certainly Napoleon has suffi- 
ciently proved, that he had completed his course of 
military study before he commenced his campaigns 
in Italy. 

The battles of Lutzen and of Bautzen are at 
least as memorable in the eyes of soldiers as the 
first battles in Italy, perhaps more so, when we re- 
member the French army was composed of con- 
scripts, marines, deficient in cavalry, and when we 
call to mind the valour Napoleon displayed there. 
He supplied every thing by the force of his genius 
and enthusiasm. 






73 



Vol VII. page 501. — " But it unfortunately happened that 

f Buonaparte, generally tenacious of his own opinion, and parti- 
cularly when his reputation was concerned, imagined to himself 
that he could not cut away the mast without striking the co- 
lours which were nailed to it," &c. 

The author must allow that the end has too clear- 
ly shown how well this opinion of Napoleon was 
founded. I confess having at this period urged a 
peace, at whatever price it might be obtained, and 
having used every effort, however feeble, to influ- 
ence Napoleon ; but I also confess I then believed 
peace really was desired, whilst subsequent events 
have proved that the destruction of Napoleon and 
the abasement of France was in view ; and it was 
granted to the fcfrmer to persist in his own opinion, 
as soon as he was convinced of the real intentions 
of his enemies. These have however unintention- 
ally added to the feme of Napoleon, by persevering 
in tearing him from France. They have thus shown 
themselves convinced that the preservation of the 
one was incompatable with the abasement of the 
other. 



10 



74 



VOLUME VIII. 

Vol VIII. pages 21 and 22.— "A great part of the popula- 
tion of France without having any distinct views as to its fu- 
ture government, were discontented with that of Buonaparte." 

The author here gives us a just idea of his love 
of truth, and of the importance he considers his 
readers, whom the return from the island of Elba 
will sufficiently convince of the absurdity of such 
an assertion. 

Vol. VIII. page 79. — " Augereau was compelled to abandon 
the country of Gex and Franche Comte and again to return un- 
der the walls of Lyons. Napoleon was not more complaisant 
to his old comrade and tutor," &c. 

The care the author takes to repeat this folly is 
a new proof of the calumnious and defamatory in- 
tention of his book. It would be curious if the au- 
thor were, in a new edition, to make known the mo- 
tive for such an opinion. Augereau was certainly 
a good general; but he perfected himself in the 
school of Napoleon, and he was inferior to Masse- 
na, to Desaix, to Kleber, and to Soult. 

Vol. VIII. page 134,&c. — All that the author here 
relates on the occasion of the march of the allies to 
Paris, is but little worthy of history, setting aside 
the similes and pleasantries with which he adorns 
his subject : his exaggeration and his trivial similes 



ID 



may be very well placed in the tavern scenes of a ro- 
mance, but they appear to me to be greatly mis- 
placed in history. 

I shall indulge myself by subscribing entirely 
against the principles and the lessons of tactics 
which he gives even to Napoleon himself. The 
manoeuvres of the latter in the campaigns of France 
were perhaps amongst his greatest, or at least the 
most learned of his actions, even according to the 
declaration of his enemies. If his last manoeuvre 
failed, it was because Paris was not in a condition 
to resist, and Napoleon did not judge it right to arm 
its numerous population. He did not even distri- 
bute the arms which were in the arsenal of Vin- 
cennes ; thirty thousand muskets were found when 
no longer necessary. But if his last manoeuvre had 
succeeded, it is undeniable that the allies arriving 
at Paris, and having to fight the army, that this ca- 
pital could and ought to have contained, having Na- 
poleon and the grand army behind them, flanked by 
the warlike population they had passed through, the 
allies I repeat would have been entirely lost — they 
would have been all killed or taken. 

Sir Walter Scott says as follows : — 

Vol. VIII. pages 126 and 127.—" The tactics of Austria 
being rigidly those of the old school of war, they esteemed their 
army turned wherever a French division occupied such a post 
as interposed between them and their allies. This indeed is in 
one sense true; but it is equally true, that every division so in- 
terposed is itself liable to be turned, if the hostile division so 
interposed take combined measures for attacking it. The catch- 



76 

ing, therefore too prompt an alarm or considering the conse- 
quences of such a movement as irretrievable, belongs to the pe- 
dantry of war, and not to its science. " 

And here I may be permitted to tell the author, 
with too much presumption perhaps, but with every 
possible foundation, that his opinion in this respect 
may very justly be called pedantry, but it is not and 
never was conformable to the science of war. — 
Austrian tactics, like all ancient and modern tac- 
tics, have with reason always considered that an 
army, when turned, is in great danger; but an army 
is not called turned when a division of the enemy 
threatens the flank by placing itself in the middle 
of its adversaries' troops ; in this case the attack- 
ing division would be endangered, and not the army 
opposed to it. 1 will venture to say that when it 
is really turned, the alarm cannot be too promptly 
taken, and that the success of such a manoeuvre 
can only be prevented by the greatest vigilance, and 
by an immediate perception of the enemy's inten- 
tion. 

It appears that Sir Walter Scott's military school 
would give lessons in tactics to the two belligerent 
parties. 

Vol. FIJI, page 178. —"Most of these banditti (it is the 
people of Paris of whom the author thus speaks) were under 
the influence of Buonaparte's police, and were stimulated by 
the various arts which his emissaries employed,'' &c. 

We have seen, on the contrary, that he would not 
distribute arms in the Faubourgs, and it was perhaps 



77 

to this that was owing the entry of the allies into 
Paris, with all its consequences ! ! ! 

Vol. VIII. p. 212, &c. — The author here gives him- 
self a great deal of trouble to establish the right of 
the Senate, to declare the forfeiture of the throne, 
and his opinion is worthy of the rest of his book. 
What! a protecting Senate,* instituted by the con- 
stitution of the empire to preserve and guard it, can 
they destroy it ! A body, all the members of which 
had been named by the Emperor, artjd who, up to the 
previous evening, had taken an oath of fidelity to 
him, had such a body the right not only to break 
their faith, but also to overthrow the Emperor and 
his throne ! Those, who prodigal of their complai- 
sance and flattery, had never once raised a voice to 
make the slightest observation upon the imperial 
government! 

These assertions are so false and so absurd that 
they do not deserve to be refuted seriously. 

Vol. VIII. page 212.—-" Now every legal obligation may be 
unloosed in the same way in which it is formed." 

To this I agree; but was it the Emperor who had 
received the throne by a senaius-consultum of the Se- 
nate which was constituted at the same time with 
himself? Where and how were the votes declared 
for the abdication, as they had been for the erection 
of the empire? 

* Un Senat conservateur. 



78 

We must excuse the similes and trivial invectives 
of the author. It is difficult to reconcile the spirit 
of this voluminous libel with the phrases which 
escape the author, as it were in spite of himself, 
such, for instance, as the following : 

Vol. VIII. pages 208, and 209. — "This feeling, however, 
would be greatly overbalanced by recollecting the use which 
was made of the power thus acquired; the subjugation, to wit, 
of foreign enemies, the extinction of civil dissensions, the pro- 
tection of property, and, for a time, a personal liberty also. 
Napoleon's having elevated France from the condition of a di- 
vided and depressed country, in the immediate apprehension of 
invasion, into that of arbitress of Europe, would at once justify 
committing the chief authority to such able hands, and excuse 
the means he had used for attaining it; especially in times 
when the violent and successive changes under which they had 
long suffered had made the nation insensible to irregularities 
like those attached to the revolution of the 18th Brumaire. 
Buonaparte was standing under the canopy, he grasped the re- 
gal sceptre in his hand; his assuming the royal seat passed al- 
most as a matter of course. 

" Our supposed Parisian has next to review a course of years 
of such brilliancy as to baffle criticism, and charm reason to 
silence, till the undertakings of the Emperor seem to rise above 
each other in wonder, each being a step towards the completion 
of that stupendous pyramid, of which the gradations were to 
be formed by conquered provinces," Sec. 

The style of the author here shows him as an 
historian, and he does homage to truth as well as 
to him whose reputation he has so violently at- 
tacked throughout the rest of the book. 

Vol. VIII. page 210. — " The victories of France had brought 
on her the hatred of Europe, and well nigh national bankrupt- 
cy," &c 



79 

I think every impartial reader, and chiefly poste- 
rity, will take note of the truth contained in the 
preceding quotation, and at the same time they will 
be astonished at the singular reproach, "that the vic- 
tories of France almost caused a national bankruptcy;'''' 
for Napoleon left, on his abdication, the treasury 
filled with gold and silver, and it is known what en- 
ormous sums were paid by the public treasury. 

Vol. VIII. fiage 235. — " No, no, cried Napoleon, I will have 
nothing to do with Corsica," &c. 

From the way in which this is related, it would 
be thought that Napoleon despised his native coun- 
try; but I must assume to myself a more natural in- 
terpretation, and one more conformable to the cha- 
racter of Napoleon, which is, that after his abdica- 
tion he had no desire to remain in the French ter- 
ritories. 

Vol. VIII. page 242. — "Napoleon carried to Elba the unre- 
pressed execrations of many of his former subjects, who re- 
fused to regard his present humiliation as an amends for what 
he had made them suffer during his power," &c. 

The author here sports with his readers, or he 
has lost his memory; for he appears to have forgot- 
ten the triumphant return of Napoleon from the isle 
of Elba, some months after, without firing a shot. 
This return, which may almost be called miracu- 
lous, sufficiently demonstrates the falsehood and the 
weakness of the above quotation. 

After the allies had entered Paris on the 30th of 
March, 1814, this exclamation of despair was heard 



80 

throughout the rest of France : — // is treason that has 
destroyed our Emperor! The allied troops also heard 
these complaints and regrets, and these appear to 
be sufficiently conclusive against the assertion of the 
author. 

Vol. Fill, page 309.—" The state of the clergy is next to be 
considered in 1814," &c. 

How can the author justify what he here says, 
when he has been previously obliged to avow, "that 
all the influence of his power, and all the ascendancy of 
his genius, were necessary to Napoleon, on proclaiming 
the treaty he had concluded with the Holy See." Has he 
forgotten that he himself had previously related the 
disinclination of the people to the re-establishment 
of religion, so clearly proved by the report of Gene- 
ral Delmas, a general the most distinguished by his 
valour and good fortune? The clergy, on the con- 
trary, owed much to Napoleon, and he knew it, 
whatever Sir Walter Scott may say. Napoleon, no 
doubt, feared their entrenching upon his power, but 
on this essential point, as on all the principal objects 
of the government, Napoleon was what he ought to 
have been, the conciliator of the past and the pre- 
sent, and the guarantee for the future; if I may be 
allowed this expression: he ought, consequently, to 
have re-established religious worship, but not the 
abuses which elsewhere had so great an influence 
in the reformation, and in France contributed to the 
revolution. It is surprising that a Protestant should 
thus reproach him, if this protestant was honest in 
his writings, but he takes care to prove the contra- 
ry at every page. 



81 

How dare he assert, that he who re-established 
the clergy, assigned revenues to the bishops and 
other pastors, and advantaged them in all ways, and 
at this period against public opinion, had the design 
of reducing the priesthood by famine ? It was a sin- 
gular means of starving people to recall them from 
exile, and provide them with places and £Ood pay- 
ment ! ! ! 

Vol. FIJI, page 320. — " It would be wasting time to show 
reasons why the French army should have been attached to Na- 
poleon. They could not be supposed to forget the long career 
of success which they had pursued under his banner, the pen- 
sions granted in foreign countries which were now retrenched, 
and the licensed plunder of their Emperor's unceasing cam- 
paigns. 

Here let me be allowed to relate to the author 
the speech of the. French grenadier, who fighting 
with heroic valour under the walls of Paris, was 
addressed by his enemies, who exclaimed to him — 
" How can you show so much courage and devotion for 
your Emperor, ivho does not even give you your pay, and 
owes you such large arrears ?" " Eh! what does it sig- 
nify to you (replied the brave fellow,) if I choose to 
give him credit?" 

Nevertheless the author soon contradicts what he 
has advanced, because truth compels him to confess 
it. We read further on : 

Vol. VIII. page 320. — " Nor was it only the selfish interests 
of the army which rendered them discontented. The sense of 
honour, as it was called, or rather the vanity of military ascen- 

11 



82 

dancy and national aggrandizement, had been inspired by Buo- 
naparte into all classes of his subjects, though they were chiefly 
cherished by his companions in arms. According to their opin- 
ion, the glory of France had risen with Buonaparte, and sunk 
with him for ever. 

" The meanest follower of the camp affected to feel his 
share in the national disgrace," &c. 

A people, an army of which the meanest follower 
of the camp shows such sentiments, then, is not a 
mercenary and pillaging army! The contradictions 
contained in this book are too numerous and too 
manifest to be all detected. 



CHAPTER 13. 



Vol. VIII. page 348, &c— The author, in this 
chapter, details the causes of the return from the 
island of Elba. 

I do not know whether the persons to whom he at- 
tributes it really took part in it. It is incontestable, 
that its principal cause was the attachment of nearly 
the whole nation to Napoleon. Those who can 
deny this, after the manner in which the return from 
the isle of Elba took place, may also deny the light 
of the sun. I have already declared, and I boldly 
repeat, that Napoleon was the man of the nation 
and of the army : in France the one is not, and can- 
not be divided from the other; for the army being 
formed by conscription, was as it were composed of 
the purest blood of the nation. 



4 



83 

One of the great errors of foreigners and also of 
emigrants is the refusing to acknowledge that the 
nation was no longer what it was formerly described 
to be. Its frivolity, its imagined inconstancy, which 
only belonged to a certain class, were lost in the 
great affairs and commotions of the last thirty years; 
and every impartial spectator must allow that the 
present generation is more enlightened, more solid, 
and more persevering. Treason and the coalition 
of nearly all Europe had humbled France, but not 
conquered her : wounded in her honour she turned 
towards her new government, introduced and in- 
stalled by foreign armies, like a young man who has 
received a cruel insult, impossible or at least ex- 
tremely difficult to pardon, and only possible after 
a long series of friendly services and benefit. 

If we wish for further proof of the manifest and 
almost universal contradiction prevailing though- 
out this book, it will be found in the following pas- 
sage : 

Vol. VIII. page 393. " Thus, notwithstanding the return of 
Napoleon was far from being acceptable to the French univer- 
sally, or even generally, all open opposition to his government 
ceased, and he was acknowledged as Emperor within about 
twenty days after he landed on the beach of Cannes with a 
thousand followers." 

Can it be supposed that if the return of Napoleon 
had not been agreeable to almost the whole of the 
French nation, he could have disembarked almost 
alone at Cannes, traversed France in triumph, and 



84 

been re-seated on the throne within twenty days af- 
ter. 

Vol. VIII. page 395. " The Congress at Vienna happened 
fortunately not to be dissolved, when the news of Buonaparte's 
escape from Elba was laid before them by Talleyrand on the 
11th March," &c. 

It was perhaps an error in Napoleon not to have 
awaited the dissolution of the congress; but to 
determine this it is necessary to know whether cir- 
cumstances allowed him to prolong his stay in the 
isle of Elba. 

Vol. VIII. pageA'S.l. " Itis true that the influence of Fouche, 
his minister of police, managed by indirect means to get pos- 
session of most of the journals," &c. 

I think it was a great fault to have trusted a se- 
cond time to Fouche a situation of such import- 
ance, and the result has but too well proved the 
justice of this opinion. 

Vol. VIII. page 455, &c. — The author describes 
the battle of Waterloo. The rest of the volume is 
employed in a consideration on the causes of the 
issue of this battle, which he attributes solely to his 
countrymen and to Lord Wellington. 

It is undeniable that, in order to be just, as a fai- 
lure is attributed to the general-in-chief of an army, 
so should also be the victory ; to judge however by 
the reports of the two belligerent parties, the Prus- 
sians, with Generals Blucher and Bulow, principal- 
ly contributed towards it. 



1 



85 



VOLUME IX. 

In this volume the author treats of the conse- 
quences of the battle of Waterloo, the retreat of 
Napoleon in the English ships, his removal to Saint 
Helena, of his residence in this island, and of his 
death. 

I may be excused if I do not, in imitation of the 
English author, enlarge upon this sad subject. I 
have not the courage to dwell upon the ninth and 
last volume of the work of Walter Scott, upon the • 
insults arid 'ironical justifications of the measures of 
which Napoleon was the victim ; modesty, in default 
. of every humane sentiment, should have prevented 
the dwelling with complacency on the suffering of m 
six years of agony, supported with as much greatness 
as resignation by an enemy, who, I repeat, was the 
dupe of his too great confidence — of his too great 
reliance. 



CONCLUSION. 

The work of Sir Walter Scott is evidently an 
attack upon the glory of France and upon Napo- 
leon. This vast libel must naturally have found, 
and has found readers, on account of the name of 



86 

its celebrated author. By the aid of his name, and 
a sort of half praise, he endeavours to pass as true 
all that could injure the memory of Napoleon. It 
not only contains inaccuracies, falsehoods, and cruel 
irony, but even calumnies the more revolting, as 
they concern an enemy who has been dead seven 
years, who could inspire neither fear nor hatred in 
a generous mind. 

We are astonished to find in this book the sub- 
stance of nearly all the libels, pamphlets, criticism, 
and satires, published in profusion during the last 
thirty years upon France and upon Napoleon. 

However this may be, ^r^oleonwas t he greates t I 
maji tha t ev er existed. Let any impartial reader 

1 follow me for a moment through a short review of 
his life, and he will rea dily acknowledg e this to be 
^true^_ 

Napoleon was born under French laws and on 
the French territory ; reared up in its bosom, he 
became acquainted with foreign countries and beau- 
tiful Italy, whence his family derived their origin, 
only when at the head of the immortal legions of 
France. His family inhabited a small town, it was 
in easy circumstances, without possessing great 
riches; but in the 13th century his ancestors were 
distinguished in Tuscany and in the Trevisian 
Marches, and even enjoyed sovereign privilege in 
Treviso. 



87 

I am far from attaching any material importance 
to the chance of birth, I merely repeat a fact, be- 
cause the libellers have been pleased to spread 
false reports concerning ours. As to all else it ap- 
pears to me that nobility may be compared to the 
impression of money, which is real if the metal it 
covers has an intrinsic value, but which is nothing 
and worthless if the metal be false and valueless. 

He was not the eldest of his family, but occupied 
that rank, and filled the office of chief of his house 
from the earliest age. 

In the military schools of Brienne and Paris he 
distinguished himself, and enjoyed an extraordinary 
consideration for his age both from the professors 
and from his companions. 

It was necessary to submit to two examinations 
in order to receive the rank of an officer of artil- 
lery, and to pass from the military schools into a 
regiment ; he alone went through them both at one 
time, and was received without opposition in the 
most brilliant manner at seventeen years of age, 
either into the regiment of La Fere or that of 
Grenoble, in which he served before the revolution; 
he there enjoyed a reputation considerably above 
his years. 

I shall not stop at the contemptible assertion that 
Napoleon ran the risk of being thrown into the 
river by his comrades; on the contrary, it was they 



«* 



• ■■■•*■- 



88 . 

who saved him one day when the cramp having 
attacked him in swimming, he was in great danger 
of perishing. 

As I was myself intended to enter the corps of 
artillery, I went through the necessary studies, and 
it was for this purpose that I accompanied my bro- 
ther to Auxonne, where his regiment (that of La 
Fere) was garrisoned. I recollect, as well as my 
extreme youth would permit me, that my brother 
accomplished the solution of a problem proposed 
to all the officers of artillery, after having been 
shut up in his apartment for seventy-two hours in 
order to complete his purpose. 

At the period of the revolution, and when every 
thing announced approaching war, he was at Va- 
lence, in the regiment of Grenoble, into which he 
had been promoted. At this time all the officers 
who had not emigrated had permission to return 
home, in order to prepare for the campaign. We 
returned to Corsica, where he was soon after ap- 
pointed to one of the newly-levied battalions. 

A law, which appears to have been made for him, 
allowed the fresh-levied troops to select chiefs from 
amongst officers of the line, and allowed the latter 
the liberty of afterwards returning to their old re- 
giments, keeping the rank they had received in the 
year. 

This law was intended to induce officers at that 



89 

time to enter the battalions as volunteers, in order 
that the latter might be promptly organized and in- 
structed. 

It had, however, a particular application to Na- 
poleon, who belonged to the privileged corps of ar- 
tillery, in which promotion, being entirely dependent 
on seniority, was very slow, he could not therefore 
have attained for many years the rank of a superior 
officer; but having been named a chief of battalion 
in the newly^raised troops, he returned soon after to 
his regiment of Grenoble, as a superior officer, be- 
ing scarcely twenty-four years of age. He then 
made a part of the expedition to Sardinia, com- 
manded by Admiral Truguet and old General Casa- 
bianca, and commanded a corps commissioned to 
attack the islands of Magdalena. His attack suc- 
ceeded, and he- returned to Corsica in consequence 
of the failure of the principal attack. It was then 
that old General Paoli, commandant of Corsica, de- 
livered up the island to the English, and that Napo- 
leon, faithful to his duty and not to be persuaded to 
betray his country, rejoined his regiment in the 
. army of Italy, the head quarters of which were at 
Nice, and retained his rank of lieutenant-colonel. 

A short time after* on his return from his com- 
mission of inspecting the different arsenals, he vi- 
sited his family at Marseilles, where they then re- 
sided, and with whom I then was. He was retain- 
ed, and to use the expression of the times, put in 
requisition to command the artillery at the neigh- 

12 



90 

bouring siege of Toulon, although he was only a 
lieutenant-colonel, in order to replace General Dom- 
martin, who had just been severely wounded. 

I am astonished how Sir Walter Scott should not 
only venture to criticise Napoleon, but that he should 
even go so far as to give him lessons in tactics. As 
these instructions were not published in the time of 
Napoleon, it is not surprising that the latter did not 
profit by them. The author cannot conscientious- 
ly reproach him for it; nevertheless he must allow 
that he whose actions he sometimes denominates 
extravagancies and- sometimes the effects of the rarest 
talent, had something more than this in him! Let 
him observe Napoleon at the age of twenty-four, 
before a sea-port town occupied by a strong com- 
bined army, and defended by a numerous fleet, at 
the head of a few troops, in part newly-levied, driv- 
ing away the enemy's ships, and seizing upon the 
place, with a weak artillery, not by opening the 
trenches, and observing the long rules of circumva% 
lation, entrenchments, &c. which were not applicable 
to the situation, by a superior and perfectly novel: 
act. His eagle-eye marked out the spot, the pos- 
session of which would enable him to disperse the 
fleet and render the place untenable. 

Arrived at the army of Italy as commandant of 
artillery, he gave council to the aged and valetudi- 
narian general-in-chief du Merbion, and directed 
the movements of the troops : the impregnable po- 
sition of Saorgio was stormed; Oneille Garesio, 



91 

Ormea occupied, the battle of Cairo won, and the 
route into Italy laid open. But the general-in-chief 
and the representatives who had all the power, were 
alarmed at the plan of the campaign he presented 
to them, and the success of the army stopped there. 

A short time after being at Paris, and summoned 
to the assistance of government, which was threat- 
ened by the greater part of the population of Paris, 
he commanded in chief, although nominally only se- 
cond in command, repulsed every attack and ap- 
peased the sedition. 

Being soon raised after to the principal command 
of the army in Italy, he put into execution the plan 
he had given to du Merbion ; he conquered in the 
very places he had previously pointed out, divided 
the Piedmontese and Austrian armies, detached 
Piedmont from the coalition formed against France, 
invaded Italy, which he progressively conquered, 
advalice/I into Germany, and succeeded in forcing 
the Emperor of Austria, whose capital he threaten- 
ed, into a peace. 

Commissioned after the peace with the command 
of the French army in the East, he crossed the Me- 
diterranean at the head of a squadron and of a con- 
siderable armament, in defiance of the English fleet ; 
he seized on the island of Malta, reputed impreg- 
nable, almost under the eyes of Nelson and in spite 
of the English fleet. 



92 

He departed irom Malta, crossed the rest of the 
Mediterranean, landed in Egypt, and seized on 
Alexandria by open force. 

A few weeks after he gained several pitched bat- 
tles, destroyed the Mamelukes, and conquered the 
whole of Egypt. 

When far from his sight, his fleet was destroyed 
near Alexandria, which the Ottomans and the Eng- 
lish prepared to attack on all sides, he crossed the 
desert, and possessed himself of the whole of Syria, 
except St. John d'Acre. There he experienced his 
first reverse; but far from being cast down, he re- 
turned into Egypt to defend his conquest against a 
powerful Mussulman army, which he defeated at 
Aboukir. 

A mere general of the Directory or Government 
of France, he was informed of its distresses and 
ventured to .return to its succour. He once again 
crossed the Mediterranean in despite of Nelson and 
the English fleet, and disembarked at Frejus. He 
was received and led in triumph to Paris, where he 
was placed with two colleagues at the head of the 
government. 

France had lost Italy; the suppressed factions 
were awakened ; the finances in distress, the trea- 
sury empty, credit lost, the territory menaced on all 
sides — and in a few weeks the treasury was replen- 



93 

ished, credit restored, the nation re-assured, and the 
armies recruited and strengthened. 

In the mean time* the Austrians had advanced 
upon the Var, and threatened Provence. Genoa in 
the occupation of the French, and defended by the 
intrepid Massena, the conqueror of Zurich, was 
pressed by the victorious armies of the enemy, who 
had become masters of the whole of Italy, and of 
the numerous strong places of this beautiful terri- 
tory. 

The Italians, whom the French had formerly 
summoned to independence by the voice of Napo- 
leon, turned towards them with hopeless regret; 
could they a second time perform what they had 
achieved in 1796, except through a series of extra- 
ordinary succes's? 

The allies were on the frontiers of France ; the 
whole of Italy in the power of the coalition, their 
strong places, their armies, twice as numerous as 
those Of France, deprived the Italians of all hope, 
If even the French could have regained their supe- 
riority, could they have ventured to hope that they 
should again conquer Italy and renew the same 
prodigies? 

Nevertheless, Napoleon set out on his campaign, 
and by a conception which surpassed that of Han- 
nibal and Csesar, he passed the Alps in the rear of 
the enemy, and whilst the latter advanced upon 



94 

Provence. Napoleon, whose progress the Alps, de- 
fended by nature and impregnable fortresses, could 
not arrest, occupied the vast plains of Piedmont, 
obliged the enemy to retrace his steps, and in the 
plains of [Marengo, in a single day, notwithstanding 
the fall of Genoa, which Massena had defended 
against every thing but absolute famine, he gained 
the brilliant victory of Marengo over Melas, forced 
him to capitulate, and in one day conquered all the 
strong places of Piedmont, one of which alone 
might have occupied his army during a whole cam- 
paign. 

At a later period when a new coalition was 
formed, he passed the Rhine, possessed himself of 
Germany and Vienna, the capital of Austria, and 
concluded a peace after having defeated the united 
armies of Prussia and Austria at Austerlitz. 

The following year, when threatened by the pow- 
erful and warlike monarchy of Prussia, he marched, 
and in a single day at Jena, he destroyed the ar- 
mies of Frederick, and took possession of the mo- 
narchy and the capital. 

Two years after, another coalition was again 
formed, and though he was in the midst of Spain 
with his veteran legions, he accepted the defiance 
of Austria, and flew in person with prodigious cele- 
rity from Burgos to Ratisbon, and at the head of a 
body of troops, principally composed of Bavarians, 
he defeated the Austrian armies, and advanced upon 



' 95 

Vienna, which he occupied for a second time, and 
threatened for the fourth. 

He dared to conceive the prodigious Russian 
campaign, and formed a combined army with as- 
tonishing rapidity, for the attack of this great em- 
pire, unaided by Poland, that is to say, without the 
independence of that country, and despite of every 
obstacle, arrived at the ancient capital of the North- 
ern empire. 

When alike deceived by the policy of the enemy, 
by flattery, and perhaps by perfidious suggestions, 
he ventured to remain on' the ruins of the burning 
city of Moscow. What energy, what perseverance, 
what activity, what vigilance, in short, what genius 
did it not require to resist in this position all that 
simultaneously attacked him ? 

I repeat, that not a single man ought to have es- 
caped this frightful catastrophe, and whatever may 
be said against Napoleon, he cannot be denied the 
merit of having preserved every link in the chain 
of command, and of having saved the feeble re- 
mains of the grand army who escaped either in the 
march to Smolensko or the astonishing passage of 
:|he Beresina. 

Instead of his detractors accusing him of under- 
going any alteration in his moral faculties, they 
ought rather to be astonished at their vigour, since 
they sufficed to save him from so extraordinary a 
situation. .^ 



4 



96 

In fact, every individual member of the grand 
army, defeated by the elements, by unheard of fa- 
tigues, by bodily suffering, by innumerable enemies, 
in short, by misfortunes great as the imagination 
can reach, ought to have been morally overwhelmed 
by so many fatalities. # 

What was not due then to him upon whom all 
depended, to whom all addressed themselves, in- 
trusted with the command, with the general direc- 
tion, and who was obliged to think for all, and to 
provide in the best manner against every evil, who 
had only the physical faculties of others, and expe- 
rienced the same wants and the same sufferings ? 
I do not think history, in its greatest military details, 
possesses any thing comparable to the Russian cam- 
paign, nor any thing which can equal the sublimity, 
for the right expression fails me, with which the 
French army rose from the catastrophe in the plains 
of Bautzen and Lutzen. 

Imagine an army formed in haste of youths, from 
the age of eighteen to twenty, and of men from the 
depots with a few companies of marines, who had 
never served in the line ; imagine an army, I say, 
united and formed under the eye of Napoleon, and 
manoeuvring without cavalry, and with heavy be- 
sieging artillery, in an open country supplying eve- 
ry thing by the force of enthusiasm, of courage and 
of genius, arresting the veteran legions of the North 
and bereaving them of victory. 



: 97 

Next contemplate' Napoleon at Dresden, betray- 
ed and surrounded on all sides, boldly encountering 
every thing, and it will be granted that this specta- 
cle was the greatest ever recorded in the annals of 
war. At Leipsic, it is true, he was near falling un- 
der the double weight of his accumulated enemies, 
and of the allies who abandoned him, but he passed 
over their bodies at Hanau, and a second time re- 
gained his frontiers, as if by enchantment, and when 
it would seem he must have perished with the last 
of his soldiers. 

Let us view him during the campaign of France, 
facing innumerable armies with a handful of brave 
soldiers, seizing again upon victory the moment she 
escaped from him, despite of both open and secret 
treachery. 

During his campaigns in Italy he protected the 
priests and emigrants; he would not destroy the 
petty princes whom the fate of war placed in some 
sort at the mercy of the army, and signed with them 
treaties which cost them, it is true, contributions in 
money and in works of art, but which assured to 
them their political existence, at least for a time, and 
as long as Napoleon could command it. 

Subordinate to the Directory, he both resisted the 
orders of the latter, who desired the destruction of 
the Holy See and the dictates of false glory, by halt- 
ing at Tolentino, and as it were at the gates of 
Rome; he there concluded a peace with the Holy 

13 



98 

See, and saved it from the overthrow, which the Di- 
rectory effected at a later period, when Napoleon no 
longer commanded in Italy. 

When he subscribed the armistice of Leoben, and 
afterwards of Campo Formio, he outstepped his in- 
structions, and acted as if he had been the gover- 
nor of France. 

He every where showed himself just, severe, eco- 
nomical, an enemy to pillage, and the terror of de- 
predators. In conquered countries he was really a 
governor, and there first manifested the superior ta- 
lent and genius which he fully displayed at a later 
period. 

When he attained the Consulate, his colleagues 
were eclipsed, and he alone governed France. 

On his promotion to the Empire it was not France 
only that he governed, but all the allied countries, 
and his influence soon extended throughout Europe 
and even beyond it. 

We thus find that he was at an early age an ex- 
ception to general rules. One may affirm, without 
exaggeration, that he was born with the instinct for 
command and superiority. The character of Na- 
poleon announced itself from his infancy, and never 
belied itself; he was eminently French : perhaps he 
pushed this affection to extremes. 



99 

He undoubtedly loved glory passionately. We 
may address to him the reproaches which Alexander, 
Charlemagne, and so many other heroes, have de- 
served infinitely more. He has moreover explained 
himself on this head in the most precise manner? 
and no one but himself would so reply and justify 
himself; but it will be averred by those who knew 
him personally, as well as by those who will judge 
his memory impartially, that no one amongst those 
upon whom depended the fate of nations, was less 
vindictive and less cruel. 

He was sober, and possessed only the nobler 
passions. It is vain to dwell upon the horrors with 
which it has been attempted to taint his manners ; 
since the accusations rest solely upon the reports 
and the sarcasms of libels, they may well be the 
appendage of such ephemeral writings, but they do 
not belong to the province of History. 

It is undeniable, that as the husband of a first 
wife much older than himself, he lived with her as 
a husband in the greatest harmony until the last 
day of their union, without giving her any cause of 
complaint. 

It is also undeniable that he cannot be reproached 
with any titled mistress, nor any scandal, and that 
married a second time, at forty-two years of age, 
he displayed towards his second wife a courtesy, an 
amiability, a gracefulness, and an attention which 
never failed. 



100 

We must, in answer to an accusation of Walter 
Scott, respecting the egotism of Napoleon, here re- 
late what passed before the birth of his son, when 
the celebrated Dubois reported to him that the 
alarming circumstances of the accouchement en- 
dangered both the mother and child, and that he 
must submit to the loss of either one or the other. 
He replied — above all things save the mother. Is not 
such conduct a sufficiently formal contradiction 
given the author before hand ? 

His field sports were neither injurious nor burden- 
some to the public. Even the luxury of his court 
had for its object the advancement of arts and ma- 
nufactures, while its simplicity was extreme. 

His administration was admirable; it bore the 
stamp of genius, and deserves as much study as his 
campaigns ; and his enemies must allow that they 
were despite themselves his pupils. 

From him may be dated the increased activity 
and vigilance of governments ; and since his time, 
utility and improvement have become their princi- 
pal objects ; and his enemies will vainly deny that 
they are compelled to follow in the track which he 
has laid down. 

It cannot be forgotten that he was the promoter 
of the general and uniform codes which govern 
France. What difficulties had he not to encounter 
and overcome, in wounded self-love and private in- 



101 

terests ? With what perseverance did he not attain 
to this noble and generous end? His genius is dis- 
played in all his actions, and chiefly in those im- 
mortal assemblies in which the most distinguished 
men of France were met together to discuss its 
code of laws. He mingled in their discussions as 
if he had been a consummate lawyer. On quitting 
the cabinet, where he had just combined his plans of 
campaign, or discussed the difficult affairs of policy 
and administration, he entered the council of state 
and put himself on a level with the Portalis and 
Tronchets. Whatever changes may occur in these 
immortal codes, it will never be forgotten that he 
was their author, for if this title justly belongs to 
princes who have conceived the idea of collecting 
and classifying the laws, it appertains by a still 
greater reason to him who took an active part in 
their composition. 

Perfection belongs to God alone; every mortal 
who approaches towards it is wise, but he who pre- 
tends to having attained it, proves himself to be a 
madman. Where is the hero, the conqueror, who 
is irreproachable? Titus, who is considered as the 
best of princes, may he not as I have already re- 
marked, be accused of the death of more than a mil- 
lion Jews? Did he not crucify his unfortunate pri- 
soners in sight of the desolate people of Jerusalem. 

War and the cares of government not only demand 
a firm but an almost insensible heart, and this is 
the lot of great men. As for me, I scarcely envy 



J 02 

those who are crowned with the tialo of glory ; but 
while I render full justice to the beauty, the splen- 
dor, and the merit of great actions, I confess that 
fame is only acquired at a price too painful for 
and incompatible with a sensitive heart. 

Let those who accuse Napoleon of having held 
the reins with too firm a hand, and of having neg- 
lected all secondary considerations, in order to ad- 
vance the general interests of France, think upon 
the extreme difficulty of the times and of his situa- 
tion, and chiefly of the almost impossibility of es- 
cape from the snares of flattery and the systems of 
intestine intrigue carried on against the commence- 
ment of his power, perhaps even from his cam- 
paigns in Italy, and he will be fully justified. 

He fell at length beneath long premeditated trea- 
son, and vicissitudes of fortune, at a time when the 
boldest and most skilful of his manoeuvres would 
have produced the most brilliant and decisive vic- 
tories, if Paris had held out for a few days. 

He fell, but armed, and possessing the esteem 
and even the respect of his enemies, the tears of 
his warriors and the fond regrets of the great ma- 
jority of the nation. A few months he was recalled 
by these wishes and regrets, and almost alone he 
re-appeared upon the soil of his ancient empire 
against a powerful king, who was supported by the 
right of birth and the armies of all Europe. He re- 
appeared, and in twenty days was re-established on 



103 

the throne, carried almost in triumph, and without 
shedding a single drop of blood. 

The coalition was formed anew ; he appeared on 
the field of battle, and victory gave' him a passing 
acknowledgment, but as if she were taking her last 
farewell. 

He sunk at Waterloo, at Paris, and more deeply 
still at Rochfort, where he took the fatal resolution 
of placing himself in the hands of his most power- 
ful, but the most ancient and the most infuriated of 
his enemies. 

He perished after six years of agony, confined 
two thousand leagues from Europe, he whom so 
many battles had respected ! ! ! He perished, but 
enmity itself, whilst overwhelming him with its last 
attacks, contributed to his triumph. 

What greater proof could be given of the influ- 
ence of his genius and of the affection of France, 
than the precaution of placing between her and 
Napoleon the immensity of the ocean? 

What more conclusive proof can be afforded of 
the value and merit of such a prisoner than the pre- 
cautions adopted to guard a single individual? The 
two thousand leagues of sea did not suffice, a body 
of troops and a fleet were also necessary. This 
was not even judged sufficient, and the belligerent 
powers sent a resident minister, commissioned to 



104 

assure himself that Napoleon should not escape 
them. If Sir Walter Scott and the numerous co- 
hort of periodical writers would for one instant be 
impartial, they would easily be convinced, that since 
the world was created there has never appeared a 
captain, a conqueror, a king, who could be com- 
pared with Napoleon. 

L. DE SAINT LEU. 

Florence, May 26th, 1828. 



The References in the text are to the English Edition, but the fol- 
lowing Table will enable the reader to refer also to the Ameri- 
can Edition, published by Carey, Lea and Carey. 



J.ondon Edition. American Edition. 

VOL. III. VOL. L 

Page 6 274. 

14 276. 

21 279. 

23 '• 279. 

SO-- 282. 

49-50 289. 

72 297. 

118 312. 

141 320. 

145 322. 

254 358. 

264 36L 

VOL. IV. 

Page 50---- 405. 

60 408. 

81 415. 

84 *• 417. 

91 419. 

VOL. V. VOL. II. 
Page 92 • 38. I 

111 45. 

195 72. 

£07 77. 

262-263 87. 

254 93. 

262 94. 

266 95. 

268-269 96. 

•sot •••• -i — i. 

346-347 124. 

351 127. 

402 143.* 

VOL. VI. 

Page 42-43 150. 

113 173. 

320 175. 

\: .:... 1P~>. 



London KUition. American Edition. 

VOL. VI. VOL. II. 

Page336 247. 

345 250. 

357 254. 

364 256. 

VOL. VI J. 

Page 65 277* 

77 281. 

167 311. 

172 313. 

229 332. 

238 335. 

397 390. 

412 395. 

421 398. 

VOL. III. 

429 10. 

439 13. 

493 32. 

501 35. 

VOL. VIII. 

Pajre 21 84. 

79 103. 

134 '-114. 

126 H9. 

178 137. 

208 147. 

210 148. 

212 148. 

235 154. 

242 156. 

'309 182. 

320 186. 

348 201. 

393 211. 

395 *213. 

421 ........220. 

155 ^39. 




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SIR WALTER SCOTT'S X 



HISTORY 



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PHILADELPHIA 



CAREY^ XBA & CAREY, — CHE8WUT STREET. 

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